by Bruce Walker
Michigan renters unable to manage their monthly payment are being granted relief through May 15.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed Executive Order 2020-54 on Friday afternoon. The order extends her previous mandate to suspend evictions for tenants and mobile home owners who rent lot space while the state copes with the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Right now the most effective tool we have to fight this virus is to stay home and slow the spread through person to person contact. That is why it is important to extend my executive order to suspend evictions so people can focus on staying home and staying safe,” Whitmer said in a press release.
The order prohibits entering premises for the purpose of evicting a resident, and prohibits landlords from demanding possession of premises for nonpayment. It also authorizes the Michigan Supreme Court to stay eviction-related proceedings until after the COVID-19 emergency has passed.
“Due to the protection that a residential home provides from the COVID-19 pandemic, and the need to contain self-quarantined and self-isolated individuals within a residential home, no person may enter residential property in order to remove or exclude from the premises a tenant, a vendee of a forfeited executory contract, a person holding under a tenant or vendee, or the personal property of a tenant, vendee, or person holding under them,” the order reads.
“[A] sheriff, under-sheriff or constable, deputy, or other officer must not serve process requiring forfeiture of leased residential premises or residential premises held under a forfeited executory contract,” the order continued.
Notable exceptions to the order are also noted, including “when the tenant, vendee, or person holding under them poses a substantial risk to another person or an imminent and severe risk to property.” Likewise, it is forbidden for any person to “deny a mobile home owner access to their mobile home, except when the mobile home owner’s tenancy has been terminated because the mobile home owner poses a substantial risk to another person or an imminent and severe risk to property.”
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Bruce Walker is a regional editor at The Center Square. He previously worked as editor at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy’s MichiganScience magazine and The Heartland Institute’s InfoTech & Telecom News.
Background Photo “Eviction Notice” by David Jackmanson. CC BY 2.0.
