New Orleans sanitation worker Bobby Parker, 56, spent two weeks sleeping on floors and couches after his landlord locked him out for paying rent four days late.

The apartment's owner, Bettie Salles of Metairie, ignored calls from a legal-aid lawyer and even a court order against her, but relented on Thursday evening, when reached by staff from Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s office and by a string of concerned citizens who had read about Parker’s illegal eviction on social media.

Parker’s harrowing tale shines a light on the fact that the eviction moratoriums now in place in New Orleans are only as good as their enforcement. In Orleans Parish, Civil District Court judges halted all residential evictions starting on March 13, a suspension that will be in place until at least April 30. The federal CARES Act also prevents evictions through July 25 for anyone with a federally backed mortgage of any kind.

But, for the last two weeks, Parker couldn’t comply with the city’s stay-at-home order because he had no home. Instead, he spent nights on friends’ couches or sleeping on a pallet of blankets on their floors. Sometimes, he ended up rolling himself up in his blankets and sleeping outside.

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It was a situation made worse by the fact that Parker has a weakened immune system, which makes it more likely that the coronavirus would strike him harder were he infected.

Before dawn every day, Parker gets up to catch the bus to his sanitation job in the French Quarter. He checks in, grabs a rolling trash can, and begins to walk the narrow streets of the French Quarter, picking up rubbish.

Usually, once Parker is done with work, he heads home, washes off the dirt of the day in the tub, and relaxes inside for the night. But March 25 turned out to be his last day at home for awhile. That morning, he made a cup of coffee and left his apartment at around 6 a.m. He got home at 6:30 p.m.

“When I put the key in the door, it didn’t do nothing,” he says. “I tried the top lock, then the bottom lock. I went to the back door. I couldn’t get in anywhere.”

Lockouts and threatened lockouts have become "common" since the first mid-pandemic rent payments were due on April 1, said Frank Southall, lead organizer for the Jane Place Neighborhood Sustainability Initiative.

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Legal-aid lawyers are scrambling to defend people unable to make rent. While some property owners are working with their renters, other landlords are “threatening eviction and using other tactics to bully tenants,” such as refusing to make necessary repairs or turning off utilities, said Hannah Adams of Southeast Louisiana Legal Services’ housing unit. Adams’ colleague, Andrew Maberry, is defending Parker.

In September 2019, Parker rented the back apartment of a nondescript single shotgun, one of two homes standing on a gritty, commercial block of North Galvez Street. In his yearly lease, he agreed to pay $446 by the 9th of each month, a rate set by the Road Home Small Rental Program, which mandated affordable rents in exchange for grants to repair properties from the floods of 2005.

On March 13, Parker was four days late paying rent to Salles. He’d fallen ill, tested positive for the regular flu, and missed two weeks of work. His doctors — worried that he might have pneumonia — asked him to spend a few extra days recuperating.

Parker said he told Salles on March 9 that he would be a little late with the rent. But on March 13, she would not accept $446. According to her calculations, Parker owed an additional $400 — or $100 per day in late fees. Too much, said Eric Dunn, director of litigation at the National Housing Law Project, who noted that late fees must be reasonable and that $100 a day could only be reasonable, “if you were renting the Taj Mahal.”

Six days after he was locked out, Parker triumphed in court. On March 31, Judge E. “Teena” Anderson-Trahan of Second City Court ordered Salles to change the locks back, because Parker had not been afforded “judicial process.”

For the next nine days, Salles, 92, refused to comply. She hung up the phone when asked about the matter by a reporter, then sent a text saying: “REPORT THIS: pay the $2,395 due in cash today.”

It’s unclear how Salles reached that amount.

As Salles refused to heed the judge’s order, Maberry felt as though his hands were tied. After all, courts couldn’t conduct a contempt hearing until May, he said. Meanwhile, Parker grew increasingly discouraged. “Is there really an eviction moratorium if someone can take the law into her own hands, without any consequences?” he asked.

Then, on Thursday, Salles received a flood of phone calls from worried locals, including staff from the mayor’s office, who had heard about Parker’s case on social media. By 5:30 p.m. Thursday, he had a new shiny brass key in his hand. He put it into his lock.

This time, the key turned, opening the door.

A longer version of this article originally appeared in Shelterforce, an independent publication that serves community development practitioners across the U.S. Read the full version, other Shelterforce COVID coverage, or sign up here to receive Shelterforce Weekly in your inbox.

Editor's note: This story was updated on April 11 to say the federal CARES Act prevents evictions through July 25.