I wasn’t sure what would be there when I opened up the editorial, but for all the crap I give the Trib Editorial Board this is a very good editorial on Dart’s move to delay some evictions
Our first instinct was to tell Dart he can’t take the law into his own hands—his job is to carry out the orders of the circuit court. But as we look at this, Dart has a reasonable case to make—for a short time.
This isn’t simply the sheriff riding up on a white horse to protect down-and-out citizens from losing their homes. Dart understands that his office is charged with enforcing lawful evictions. But he’s tired of his deputies showing up to serve eviction papers, only to find tenants who had been paying the rent faithfully, with no clue that the building was in foreclosure and no warning that they’d have to find another place to live.
In other words, he’s tired of his deputies doing the lenders’ grunt work and the taxpayers getting the bill for it.
State law that took effect Jan. 1 requires that renters be given 120 days notice before being forced to move by a foreclosure. But Dart says the banks often don’t bother to determine who is living in the house when obtaining an eviction order. When deputies go to the house and find a tenant who isn’t named on the papers, they have to halt the eviction and go back to court—at which time the banks are happy to take the names of the current occupants, add them to the order and start the 120-day clock.In the past, if deputies found no one home when they arrived with an eviction order, they often entered the house and hauled the contents to the curb (where they were frequently looted by neighbors). But the department stopped that practice because it’s impossible to know if the occupant was notified legally. Now if deputies find nobody home, they leave.
All those wasted visits and all that time running back and forth to court cost taxpayers about $100,000 a year, a sheriff’s spokesman said. And that number will likely rise. The department was on pace to do 4,500 evictions this year —more than twice what it did in 2006—before Dart hit the brakes.