An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: SINCE COVID-19 MANY AMERICANS FELL BEHIND IN ALL ASPECTS,” reads the website copy. The button below this statement is not for a GoFundMe, or a petition for calling for rent relief. Instead, it is the following call to action, from a company called Civvl: “Be hired as eviction crew.” During a time of great economic and general hardship, Civvl aims to be, essentially, Uber, but for evicting people. Seizing on a pandemic-driven nosedive in employment and huge uptick in number-of-people-who-can’t-pay-their-rent, Civvl aims to make it easy for landlords to hire process servers and eviction agents as gig workers.

Civvl aims to marry the gig economy with the devastation of a pandemic, complete with signature gig startup language like “be your own boss,” and “flexible hours,” and “looking for self-motivated individuals with positive attitudes:” “FASTEST GROWING MONEY MAKING GIG DUE TO COVID-19,” its website says. “Literally thousands of process servers are needed in the coming months due courts being backed up in judgements that needs to be served to defendants.” The company, at first glance, appears to be some kind of _Nathan For You-_esque prank: siccing precarious gig jobs onto vulnerable people. But Civvl is connected to a larger — and real — gig economy company called OnQall, which describes itself as an app that provides “on-demand task services to non-urban communities beyond main city areas.” OnQall is the developer behind other, more believable TaskRabbit-esque apps, like LawnFixr, CleanQwik, and MoveQwik. Given the fact that Civvl is advertising all over the country and that OnQall, though not popular, does exist, it seems as though Civvl actually is an attempt to simplify the process of evicting people who cannot pay their rent during a pandemic.

of this story at Slashdot.

…read more

Source:: Slashdot