She's one of the hundreds facing eviction at a Richmond apartment complex and she has questions

RICHMOND, Va. -- A Richmond renter is raising concerns over a slew of evictions happening at an apartment complex off of German School Road in South Richmond.

More than 200 tenants living at James River Pointe, formerly Aden Park, were scheduled to appear in court for eviction proceedings the week of October 17. There are reportedly 500 units at the complex.

Dorie Iverson was one of the dozens of tenants to appear in court on October 19. She claims she's facing eviction because of mismanagement of COVID-19 relief funds applied to her rent.

“That’s a scene because when you go to court for Aden Park, my first experience, I went to court on time, the courtroom was full, and someone made an announcement that said if you are here for Aden Park, please go out to the lobby and 75% of the courtroom cleared out and went out to the lobby. So that many people in that courtroom were there for Aden Park," Iverson said.

Iverson said she completed her COVID-19 rent relief intake on December 31, 2021. She said she was then told she would not have to pay rent while she waited for the money to come.

"For my process, personally, everything was done on my side and the agency was waiting on Aden Park to do their part of the application. Their part of the application was not done for about two months, which I was constantly following up and the agency was following up with me, 'Have you talked with Aden Park? Have they done what they need to do?' And that had not happened, so that dragged the process on," Iverson said.

WTVR

She said she eventually received a check in July for a little more than $4,000, one month after her apartment complex changed management to AION Partners, a New York-based real estate investment company, thus changing the name to James River Pointe.

"I had a letter from Aden Park's lawyers instructing me to sign that check over to Aden Park and mail it to them, which I did. That check had not been applied to my account, as of today," Iverson said. "And nobody knows where that check is and why it has not been applied to my account. However, they still want me to go to court and file eviction proceedings when they've lost my check. And James River, when you go to the rental office now that it's open, they're like, 'We don't have anything to do with Aden Park, and now you owe us this money."

The CBS 6 Problem Solvers reached out to AION Partners multiple times for comment and has not yet heard back.

This is not the first time mass evictions in the greater Richmond area have happened at properties bought by AION.

Louisa Rich, a housing attorney with Legal Aid Justice Center, said these kinds of mass evictions are happening as COVID-19 rent relief and protections are coming to an end.

"Rent relief stopped receiving new applications after May 15, but if you put in your application before then, the landlord needed to complete the application," Rich said. "For landlords that do that up until July 1, they were not able to get eviction judgments. Even landlords that completely ignored rent relief and did things kind of against the law are now allowed to go forward on evictions for rent amounts, that were during that time when the rent relief was supposed to be available."

Rich said courts are backed up, with hundreds of cases often set for the same hour to steamroll the eviction process.

"If the tenant tries to talk and say they don’t owe that amount, a lot of times the judge will push back and be like, ‘Well do you at least owe a little bit?’ And then what happens is they kind of come out of the courtroom with a judgment, and the judge might set it for just a trial to determine the amount, but at that point, they’re going to be evicted," Rich said.

Iverson said as she waited for rent relief, she did pay some of what was owed, but still, she claims the amount owed is higher than what it should be.

"I had no idea what that check was going to be for, I actually paid on my account during that time, because what I was afraid of was that I was going to get a check for less than the seven months, and then there was going to be this big payment that I was going to have to deal with," Iverson said. "Just to kind of see where we met up in the middle and once the check came, I would know how much to pay and I could pay that."

Rich said most tenants waiting on rent relief will not contribute to their accounts. Even now, some rent relief applications that were submitted before May 15 may not be considered because of a depletion of funds.

"Relying on the idea that rent relief is going to come through has put tenants in this really big hole that they wouldn't otherwise be in, with rent amounts as much as $9,000, $10,000, which you just can't catch up easily," Rich said.

Rich said the big picture may suggest under management change, some landlords may be trying to hurry the eviction process to renovate and potentially charge renters more.

"If you're seeing half of the apartment complex evicted, then you gotta question what did the landlord really do to make sure somebody could stay there," Rich said.

Iverson said she will be making payments through a legal representative henceforth, but others may not be as lucky.

"This property catered to try helping people who needed affordable housing, but with that, and knowing about the clientele, that seems that the very thing that attracted them here are now being turned against them, and they're being pushed out, really with no place to go," Iverson said. "I want to be fair, but Aden Park was simply not doing their part, once I got to look at how this process was going."

Rich said tenants have the right to give their landlords the money they owe, even in court, but sometimes complexes will close a tenant's rental portal, making it seemingly impossible to get money where it's needed.

Rich also said per Virginia law, in order to appeal a nonpayment, you would have to pay your full judgment beforehand. If tenants were able to do that, Rich argued, they would not be in court in the first place, making it, again, seemingly impossible for tenants to appeal their case.

Legal Aid Justice's list of tenants' rights and information on what to do in the case of eviction can be found here.