Davenport family's eviction highlights need for affordable housing in the Quad-Cities
William Ellis is worried about fall and the coming cold.
Ellis, his wife Amber Young, and five teenage children are living out of one vehicle while trying to find housing before winter hits. They were evicted from the apartment they rented in April.
For Ellis and his family, it's rock bottom after more than a year's spiral of job loss, evictions and a series of disputes over the conditions of — and the payments for — the final place they lived.
"I've had ups and I've had downs, but this has literally been the worst year of my life," he said.
Ellis said he's worked with Humility Homes and Services, Project Now, Community Action of Eastern Iowa and the Salvation Army, but his family hasn't had any breaks so far.
The evictions have left him vulnerable to scams, too, he said. He's had property owners online offer to schedule a showing of an apartment for an up-front fee, but then never show up.
"I don't know what to do," Ellis said. "With the winter coming and with no hope really in housing besides just go to work and live outside. I see it's a lot of families that are going through this right now, at this moment, from, you know, evictions or condemned buildings or just the housing crisis that's going on."
With a large family and two evictions on his record — plus a pending misdemeanor criminal mischief case in court, which he said he is trying to defend himself against — Ellis said his family's housing options are slim to nonexistent.
'A kind of unraveling'
Nick Smithberg is the executive director of Iowa Legal Aid, an agency that represents people facing evictions. He called losing a home to eviction "devastating" for both individuals and families.
"There's an old saying: 'Rent eats first.' And it simply means that people will do anything to keep a roof over their head and the heads of their family," Smithberg said.
"Eviction is often what I call part of a kind of unraveling. People who are evicted are more likely to experience behavioral health issues like depression. They can be forced to live in substandard housing, or in neighborhoods where there are fewer economic opportunities, fewer educational opportunities. Eviction often leads to even more profound challenges and obstacles."
Ellis and his family are a few of many members of the community who have found themselves without a home due to the order of a court.
The eviction filing rates in Scott County and statewide have been rising since at least 2011.
In 2023, there were 1,458 evictions filed in Scott County. Between January and Aug. 9 of this year, there have been 893 evictions filed.
Evictions have been on the rise throughout Iowa. In 2023, the 21,096 cases filed beat the previous record of 18,866 set in 2022.
This year, a total of 13,125 evictions have been filed throughout the state.
Smithberg pointed to a little-known fact about evictions in Iowa:
"Once an eviction is filed on a person, it's on their record. It's a permanent public record," he said. "It doesn't matter if the eviction is resolved, or if the landlords drop it, or a payment plan is worked out.
"It doesn't matter. An eviction will follow a person around for the rest of their lives. It's there and it doesn't go away and it is a big reason why people are forced to live in terrible conditions in substandard rental units. It's why people become desperate."
A desperate move to a new home
Ellis tried to describe how his life unraveled.
Three years ago, in his spare time, he launched a mobile game that featured digital scenes of the Quad-Cities and hand-drawn art and music from local artists, a project that was featured on WQAD. He'd grown up in Rock Island, moved to Davenport, and at the time, rented a house in Bettendorf.
He was on a "high stride," he said, before things started to fall apart.
Ellis said he worked as a district manager at a job in Marion, which required him to be away from home most days a month. He decided he didn't want to be away so much and quit.
But, he said, he couldn't find another job that kept up with the wages he made previously. He fell behind on rent and he and his family were evicted from the Bettendorf home in January 2023.
Ellis reached out to several places to rent, and a leasing agent with a property in Davenport was willing to rent to him and his family even with the eviction.
The yellow-sided building in the 2200 block of Rockingham Road was not Ellis' first choice. But the leasing agent told Ellis he could rent and clean up the vacant ground-level former bar space, too, and turn it into an after-school spot for neighborhood teens, he said.
He and his family moved into the apartment in June 2023, according to a lease provided in court.
What followed was a series of disputes between Ellis and the leasing agent and property owner that led to Ellis filing complaints with city agencies for alleged theft and violations of his rights and the owners evicting him this spring for alleged months of not paying rent.
The property owners, reached by the Quad-City Times/Dispatch-Argus, pointed to court records and declined to comment further.
Ellis' family moved into the Rockingham Road apartment without a fridge or stove, he said.
He said the leasing agent promised appliances would soon be delivered. In the meantime, Ellis said, he continued to pay rent, but the situation continued to unravel.
'I will do anything'
Smithberg and attorneys who represent evicted tenants throughout Iowa are familiar with stories like those of Ellis.
"I hear a lot of people asking why some people live that way," Smithberg said. "And the answer is pretty simple: people will live almost anywhere to have a roof over their heads."
Smithberg said "substandard" properties are rented because landlords can offer them to people who are desperate to house themselves and family members.
It does not take long to find examples of the people Smithberg spoke about.
Kat Williams was one of over 100 people who ate lunch Wednesday at King's Harvest on West Third Street in Davenport.
She is a 34-year-old single mother of four. She earns $18 an hour working over 40 hours a week as a CNA. Food assistance of $600 a month helps her feed her children. She spends $1,100 a month for a three-bedroom home with no central air.
"We do have heat and we do have water," Williams said. "The building is very old and I'm just going to say the landlords do their best to keep things up, but it can be rough there."
Williams said she doesn't complain about "rental stuff" because she needs the place to live.
She said she has seen what happens when people lose their homes.
"I know people who have to go homeless. I've seen women with their children in cars and I understand that happens," she said. "But I come here to feed myself and sometimes I bring the kids. I do anything to save money.
"But housing, it's first always. I don't care. There is no being without a home. I will do anything. Anything. I will do whatever I need to do to make sure my kids have a place to sleep. That's it."
A dire need for affordable housing
When Ashley Velez, the executive director at Humility Homes & Services spoke at a recent Davenport City Council meeting, her message was not new and cut to the heart of the mounting obstacles faced by people like Ellis as they struggle to afford housing.
"We've known for a long time that we need affordable housing throughout the Quad-Cities," Velez said during an interview earlier this week. "That was my message again to the Davenport City Council. One of the best ways to fight homelessness is to have affordable housing available to people. This is not a new discussion."
In 2020 the Quad-Cities Housing Cluster produced a report that found since 2010, the area lost 30.5% of fair-market units, either because of increasing rents or because of closures or poor conditions.
According to the report, the Quad-Cities was short 6,600 affordable housing units even before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Other numbers from the area painted an equally stark picture of the factors that contribute to homelessness. In 2020, more than 15,400 Quad-Cities households, or about 12%, were living in extreme poverty. Of those households, 76% were spending 30% or more of their annual income on housing.
Back in July of 2023, over 1,000 people were waiting for 239 Section 8 vouchers at the Moline Housing Authority, Moline Housing Authority director John Afoun said at the time. In Rock Island, there were 980 people waiting for Section 8 vouchers.
Afoun has stressed that the lack of affordable housing is "crippling" efforts to take people off the streets, as well as out of the substandard housing many are forced to occupy.
In Rock Island County, a total of 7,699 people received housing assistance or lived in public housing in 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The average household income of those people was $14,095 a year.
There were not as many people receiving housing assistance in Scott County. A total of 4,102 received Section 8 vouchers or lived in public housing in 2022. The average income of those people was $13,395 a year.
"There is a broad emphasis on helping people own homes and fixing up existing homes for homeowners," Velez said. "But we have to find a way to get people housed. Affordable rental housing, where people can live safely, is a big part of that."
A final unraveling
According to Ellis, the problems at the Rockingham Road apartment continued throughout the fall of 2023 and into 2024.
He said he learned the property owner did not know his family was living at the Rockingham Road apartment, and the property owner hadn't received the rent Ellis said he'd paid the leasing agent in cash and check.
He said he was paying $930 a month.
Ellis said the owner then told him she'd fired the leasing agent and she ordered a fridge and stove to his unit.
"I said, OK, this is such a mess," Ellis said.
But Ellis said the owner never pressed charges despite Ellis frequently asking for a case number or police report.
Then, Ellis said in August 2023, he overheard a maintenance worker who'd brought in the unit's fridge tell a neighbor that Ellis was an "uppity n****r."
Ellis said he reported that to the property owner.
"And it only got worse from there because he never returned again to fix anything because I said that," Ellis said.
Ellis said he lost his job in November, and paid November rent late. He couldn't pay December rent.
In January, he contacted the Davenport civil rights commission about the comment by the maintenance worker, the conditions of the apartment, and the alleged stolen rent.
Ellis said his unit didn't have regular heat over the winter, and he plugged in space heaters instead to keep the place warm.
Roaches and mice infested the building, Ellis said, which he said he tried to take care of on his own by plugging up holes in the wall and spraying. Squatters attempted to break in frequently, he said, and left garbage strewn across the ground-level unused bar area of the building.
In February, Ellis said he paid the rent he owed.
But in court documents, the owners of the apartment say he did not, and that he had not paid rent in months.
Last days at Rockingham Road
As the owner at Rockingham Road apartment began filing for eviction, the city of Davenport's inspectors found issues with the Rockingham Road apartment.
The leasing company filed for eviction against Ellis in early February, court documents state, contending Ellis had not paid rent since before Oct. 1. But a judge threw out the case because the company hadn't filed verification paperwork required by the federal CARES Act.
Davenport's Neighborhood Services Department then inspected the apartment Feb. 29, and found several violations, such as deteriorated flooring, missing door locks, structural issues, and a furnace that needed servicing, according to notices posted to the building. The inspection also noted evidence of wood-boring insects, roaches, and mice, and required the landlord to hire pest control. A follow-up inspection was scheduled for early April.
Court records show the leasing company filed again for eviction in early March, alleging Ellis owed more than $5,800 in rent. The management company used an online portal for rent payment, and provided to the court a screenshot from the portal's ledger which showed Ellis' monthly balance grow.
Ellis disputes that the rent went unpaid. He said he couldn't afford internet, and the building had electricity issues, so he did not use the online portal his landlords set up. Instead, he said he was told to put his rent in cash or check into a designated box at a nearby apartment building owned by the same company. He said he texted the property owner when he did this and said he handed her the late November rent.
The judge asked him to provide proof he'd paid rent, but Ellis was only able to produce rodent-chewed documents.
Ellis told the judge about the issues with the apartment, but the judge wrote in the ruling, "the court does not have the authority to pass judgment on the condition of the property."
Then, on March 28, Ellis was charged with criminal mischief in the third degree, an aggravated misdemeanor, for allegedly kicking down a door March 18 to an unused portion of the Rockingham Road property.
Ellis pleaded not guilty, and the case is pending in Scott County court.
Ellis said he frequently had to flip a breaker in the unused part of the Rockingham Road building because electrical problems caused power to go out. After the city inspection, Ellis said the property owner locked the door. With colder temperatures that night, Ellis said he called the property owner, the fire department, police department, and anyone else he could think of to try to restore power — and therefore heat — to the apartment.
Without any answer from the property owner, Ellis said he took a broom stick and pried the bottom of the door up so his son could slide under the door and flip the switch.
"I got my family looking me in my face," Ellis said. "My wife, my kids, like, what are we gonna do? You know, are we just gonna sit here and freeze the whole night? No."
Ellis believes the evictions and the criminal charges brought against him were retaliation for reporting alleged discrimination against him to the city's civil rights commission and reporting the conditions of the apartment to city inspectors.
Ellis and his family had to be out of the property by April 1, according to court documents.
"Having the criminal mischief, having the eviction, there has been no luck with getting any kind of help or getting any kind of serious look at getting being able to rent from a place because of the eviction precedent. So we've been several months trying to figure it out, getting cold, getting a little worried."
Dennis Platt, a leader with the Quad Cities Tenant Alliance, who met Ellis during eviction court, said there's no one person at fault for a system that allows people to fall through the cracks.
"It's awfully easy to stereotype people who have an eviction on their record as 'they made bad decisions,' " Platt said. "But if you talk to the victims of eviction. It doesn't take very long to figure out that most of these people have jobs. Some have two jobs. A few have three and they have families and responsibilities and sometimes life throws you a hard ball. ... People are making hard decisions and doing the best they can."
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