Yanneth Romero, a Mandalay Bay housekeeper who hasn’t been called back to work, poses with her son Octavio in the backyard of her rental home in North Las Vegas Friday, Oct. 9, 2020. Her husband is also out of work and his unemployment claim is stuck in the system, she said.
Monday, Oct. 12, 2020 | 2 a.m.
Yanneth Romero can’t help feeling like she failed her family.
She worked as a housekeeper on the Strip. Her husband, Octavio, worked for the same resort company as a cook.
But when the town shuttered March 13 out of virus concerns, the family was left with no income to afford their modest North Las Vegas house. And with three children, even the basic of food would become a challenge.
She was furloughed, and though the resort she worked at has reopened, it’s not at full capacity, and she hasn’t been called back. Octavio also remains out of work.
Yanneth, 27, receives unemployment benefits, but Octavio’s claim is still snarled in the state’s system. The Culinary Union chips in some help, but it’s simply not enough to make ends meet.
On Thursday, she was able to clear four months of back rent through assistance from Nevada Partners, a local agency. But eviction looms in her mind — and the mind of thousands of other Las Vegas families hit hard by the pandemic.
If allowed to expire, Gov. Steve Sisolak’s directive extending the moratorium on eviction for nonpayment of rent is up on Oct. 15.
Neighborhood Housing Services of Southern Nevada, a low-income housing provider with 150 affordable homes scattered through the valley, received about $2 million to help people keep up on their rent or mortgage through the federal CARES Housing Assistance Program.
But with high demand, Neighborhood Housing Services of Southern Nevada stopped accepting applications in August, said Michelle Merced, the organization’s executive director and president. They’re still working through the 700 applications they received.
The average household grant is about $4,500, which grows as the pandemic and its economic toll continue, Merced said. The help the service can provide is now already paying for November rent, largely for displaced hospitality workers, she said.
Requests for assistance have been quiet since Sisolak extended the moratorium on Aug. 31, a day before an earlier moratorium was set to expire.
“It’s human nature, we get it,” Merced said. “We’re hoping that folks are being proactive prior to because we don’t want the floodgates to open.”
As a landlord, Merced said she hasn’t seen much delinquency because their lower-income tenants have few options.
Yanneth Romero, a Mandalay Bay housekeeper who hasn't been called back to work, poses with her children and the family dog Lily in the backyard of her rental home in North Las Vegas Friday, Oct. 9, 2020. Children from left: Kyana, 2, Octavio, 1, and Kimberly, 7. Her husband is also out of work and his unemployment claim is stuck in the system, she said.
“We already had a preexisting problem prior to COVID with affordable housing,” she said, citing a national problem. “Compound that with COVID.”
According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, pre-pandemic Clark County had 14 available and affordable rental homes per 100 homes accessible to “extremely low-income” households. This put the region with the second-fewest among all counties in the nation.
A local worker would need to earn $20.77 an hour to afford a fair-market two-bedroom residence, although the average Clark County renter only earns about $17.46 an hour, the coalition says.
For-profit landlords aren’t sure what’s coming next.
Susy Vasquez, executive director of the Las Vegas-based Nevada State Apartment Association, is expecting to find out as the current moratorium comes down to the wire.
Landlords have always been able to evict tenants for safety concerns, and as of Sept. 1 could evict for cause other than nonpayment of rent, including reneging on a payment plan if it was an official amendment to their leases.
About 20,000 of the association’s 166,000 Clark County households are behind on rent, with 12,000 of them under payment plans, Vasquez said. Payment arrangements are individually negotiated and not directed by the state order.
The pressures on landlords are unsustainable, she said. Property owners would like to be able to move out the people with the means to pay but who are taking advantage of the moratorium — a small group, she said — and an eligibility component put in place.
Payment plans show the good in people, though.
“What we’ve been saying, and my message to my members is: If they were a good resident before, do what you can to keep them, because they’ll continue to be a great resident once this is all said and done,” Vasquez said.
In North Las Vegas, Yanneth Romero is still stressed. Even with some help, she simply doesn’t have the income she once had.
She’s lived in her home for three years as her family grew; her two youngest children are toddlers. When her in-laws needed help — her father-in-law is an out-of-work construction worker, her mother-in-law is disabled — after losing their own home in Los Angeles, she took them in.
In a voice sad and weary for a young mother, she says she can still give her children a smile.
