More than 700 families now living in Richmond’s public housing communities could be facing eviction in the coming months.

The landlord, the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority, has announced that it has lifted a 26-month morato- rium on evictions and has sent 30-day notices to hundreds of households that are still in arrears on rent.

According to RRHA, households in arrears still have time to file for rent relief or come current because it is expected to take at least two months before RRHA can get cases scheduled and heard and evictions started.

The advocacy group Richmond for All is urging the city to intervene to prevent RRHA from proceeding. But so far, neither Mayor Levar M. Stoney nor City Council has introduced legisla- tion that might block RRHA from proceeding.

As of Jan. 6, RRHA reported that 1,938 households, or about half of all RRHA households, had been in arrears by $2.18 million, or an average of $1,092 per household.

However, the state’s rent relief program has paid off $1.8 million for 962 households.

RRHA also reported that another 279 households have filed applications for relief and that those households would remain safe from eviction until the state program issues a decision.

That leaves 743 households, according to RRHA, that have not yet applied for relief and are in arrears $295,433, or an average of $397 per household.

RRHA stated the number fluctuates and could be higher if households that received relief have fallen behind again.

The authority first issued a moratorium on evictions in November 2019 after facing an uproar over its strict policy of seeking eviction even if tenants owed less than $50. The RRHA was found to be among the largest single operations seeking evictions and issued the pause to review its handling of tenant removals.

The moratorium continued into 2020 and became federal policy after the start of the pandemic to reduce the number of people becoming homeless. The ban on evictions imposed by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that year extended through 2021 before being lifted at the end of the year.