Sophie thought her landlord had cut her a break on the rent. Then she saw the notice posted to her door.

The letter was from Bozzuto, the high-end real estate firm that manages her apartment building in Rosslyn. It said she had five days to pay the $1,306.80 she owed in back rent and late fees, or the company would begin the eviction process.

It didn’t matter that the company had allowed Sophie to pay half her rent in April and May after COVID-19 forced her to stop working as a housekeeper. Nor did it matter that Arlington courts weren’t hearing new eviction cases after a statewide ban that’s since been extended to June 28.

A Bozzuto representative says the company made it clear Sophie wasn’t being evicted. But that’s not how Sophie interpreted the letter she received.

“You must either vacate said Premises or pay the rent in arrears within 5 (five) days of receipt of this notice or else Landlord intends to terminate your lease and proceed to obtain possession of the Premises,” read a section of the notice.

“I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ ” says the 64-year-old, who asked WAMU to refer to her by her nickname to protect her privacy. “I was shocked to find this out when they had said they would work with me.”

Out-of-work tenants across the Washington region have reported similar actions by landlords in recent weeks, despite the fact that most eviction proceedings have been halted during the public health emergency. Sending eviction notices right now isn’t illegal, property managers point out, and small landlords in particular are seeking to avoid foreclosure — especially if they’re not eligible for federal mortgage relief. But tenant advocates say some landlords’ rent-collection practices during the pandemic have crossed the line into bullying.

“During this huge economic crisis resulting from a public health crisis that hasn’t ended, most reputable landlords are not sending five-day notices,” says Christine Marra, director of housing advocacy at the Virginia Poverty Law Center. “Most reputable landlords are working with their tenants, setting up payment plans and trying to accommodate them.”

Local officials, including Arlington County Board Chair Libby Garvey, have urged landlords to be flexible with tenants who have lost their jobs. Yet some renters say property owners and managers have used an array of tactics to compel them to pay. Some have called all hours of the day, engaged in public shaming and dispatched tough-looking men to tenants’ doors to collect overdue rent. Others have sent letters that, while legal, mislead tenants into thinking they could lose their homes in the middle of a health crisis.

“Most folks aren’t looking at the language [in these notices] that closely,” says Matt Hill, an attorney with Maryland’s Public Justice Center. “They just see ‘eviction,’ and they’re automatically intimidated by that.”

Sophie in Arlington says she didn’t know courts had suspended eviction hearings, or that the letter posted to her door wasn’t an official eviction notice. Bozzuto Regional Portfolio Manager Sarah Malone says the company “proposed a variety of payment arrangements” to accommodate Sophie’s loss of income. But the five-day warning — referred to as a “pay or quit” notice because it gives tenants five days to pay or else face eviction — had a chilling effect. Ultimately, Sophie paid her balance in full, after deferring multiple credit-card payments to free up cash.

“I decided that housing is more critical than financial stability during this time,” she says.

Meanwhile, many unemployed tenants lack the financial cushion to cover rent during the crisis. Unemployment offices have struggled to pay out benefits in time; rental assistance is in short supply; and in Arlington County, more than 70% of low-income renters are already considered severely cost-burdened, meaning they pay more than 50% of their income on housing. In the District, 53% of low-income renters are severely cost-burdened.

All of this points to a deluge of evictions as soon as courts reopen, advocates say.

“Most of my clients simply don’t have the money to pay,” says Matt Hill of the Public Justice Center. “We have a lot of people who are very scared.”

A Cause For Panic

When Sami Bourma received the five-day notice from management at Southern Towers, his apartment building in Alexandria, he had to read it a few times to parse the legalese.

“If you fail to pay or quit as demanded, an unlawful detainer action will be filed against you seeking possession of the premises … In the event you make a payment in any amount after the five (5) day period, your payment will be accepted with full reservation of the Landlord’s right to seek possession of the leased premises in accordance with the §55.1-1250 of the Virginia Code.”

Multiple Southern Towers residents who are behind on their rent received similar notices, causing some to worry they’d become homeless in a matter of days. Bourma, who lost his job as a chef in March, arranged a meeting with his labor union to explain what the letters really meant.

“The people who didn’t know, they were panicking a lot,” he says.

In Virginia, landlords are required to send a “pay or quit” notice to tenants they’re seeking to evict for nonpayment. After the letter is sent, several steps still have to take place before tenants can be removed from their homes. But the warnings sent to Southern Towers residents don’t mention these steps. Nor do they specify that proceedings for unlawful detainers — aka evictions — are currently frozen in Virginia, or that tenants can only be evicted with a court order.

Bourma helped lead a rent strike at his building in April, and he has plans for more demonstrations in the coming weeks.

“We’ve started to organize ourselves to respond to the threats,” he says.

A spokesperson for Southern Towers’ management firm, Bell Partners, says the company has extended rent due dates, waived late fees and offered payment plans and flexible lease renewals to tenants experiencing financial hardship during the pandemic. But the company is under no obligation to stop sending five-day notices to tenants in arrears.

“We take compliance with all the relevant state and local regulations very seriously,” says John Perilli, a Bell Partners representative.

Other landlords have used more aggressive tactics. Renters have reported harassing phone calls from landlords, says Kayla Williams, an attorney with Community Legal Services of Prince George’s County. A renter in Annandale reported that her building manager posted the names of tenants in arrears in a common area — an act of public shaming that may also violate Virginia law, according to attorney Dipti Pidikiti-Smith at Northern Virginia Legal Services. Matt Hill with the Public Justice Center says he has a client in Baltimore City whose landlord appeared at her home accompanied by a “truck full of men” to intimidate her into paying.

“That’s probably the most extreme example we’ve seen, but we’ve also seen landlords who will shut off the utilities in order to force payment, or landlords who claim they’re going to show up at a certain time with the sheriff,” Hill says. “We’ve seen all sorts of deceptive tactics being used.”

Utility shutoffs are currently banned in D.C., Maryland and Virginia.

Some tenants have succumbed to the pressure and vacated their apartments out of fear, even if they aren’t legally required to leave, Kayla Williams says. Often those tenants live in properties owned by mom-and-pop landlords who either don’t know the law or who have become desperate because they fear falling into foreclosure. Community Legal Services of Prince George’s County has provided some of those landlords with information about their rights and responsibilities.

“If they get [documents from us] that say, ‘Here’s what you should and should not be doing,’ sometimes that acts as a deterrent,” Williams says. “But unfortunately, we don’t always reach them in time, and that’s when we get people who have already been evicted.”

All her organization can do at that point, Williams says, is refer evicted individuals to private attorneys who can seek damages on their behalf.

A Wave Of Evictions?

Representatives of the property management industry have repeatedly said that landlords don’t want to evict tenants, especially not for nonpayment of rent caused by a pandemic. Evictions are costly, time-consuming and typically deployed as a last resort. But landlords can’t be expected to go without rent for months on end, they say.

Many landlords have seen rental income decrease while costs have increased. As residents work from home or quarantine for their health and safety, utility expenses have risen for owners who cover the cost of water, power and other necessities. Enhanced cleaning procedures — needed to comply with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines during the pandemic — are another added expense.

“Just as you have vulnerable residents, you also have vulnerable housing providers,” said Nicola Whiteman, senior vice president for government affairs at the Apartment and Office Building Association of Metropolitan Washington, during a WAMU panel conversation in May.

At the same time, eviction stoppages don’t help vulnerable tenants long-term, advocates say. Residents can still be removed from their homes once the health crisis is over, potentially leading to a national wave of evictions after courts resume eviction hearings.

That’s why AOBA and legal aid organizations alike are urging governments to provide more direct financial help to landlords and renters. Some money has begun to flow, as local and state authorities funnel federal CARES Act funds into eviction prevention programs. But even these efforts might not suffice.

A major federal cash infusion is necessary to match the scale of the crisis, advocates say. The National Low Income Housing Coalition estimates that Congress would have to approve at least $100 billion in aid to help just the country’s neediest renters.

Waiting for evictions to come roaring back — possibly leading to a spike in homelessness — would be costlier than enacting preventive measures now, says Matt Hill with the Public Justice Center.

“The state’s going to spend a lot on shelter, Medicaid, foster care costs, the costs of transporting homeless students from one school to another,” Hill says. “It’s much cheaper … to put an amount into rental assistance.”

But until that aid emerges — if it ever does — tenants should at least know they can’t be evicted for nonpayment of rent during the pandemic, says Kayla Williams with Community Legal Services of Prince George’s County.

“There are a lot of scare tactics and threats out there right now,” Williams says. “I just try to make sure that renters are aware of their rights.”

This story originally appeared on WAMU.