Sheriff: Eviction Heartless During Winter, Recession

[Nightowl]

WLWT Cincinnati (http://www.wlwt.com/money/18243370/detail.html)

HAMILTON, Ohio -- An area sheriff has ordered deputies to ignore eviction orders when people have nowhere else to live.

Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones said evictions in winter weather and during an economic recession are heartless and those cases should be sent back to the courts and resolved some other way.

Jones on Tuesday ordered deputies to ensure that people have shelter before they're forced out of their homes.

“It doesn’t cost much for me to be compassionate, and I’m not going to cause somebody to die because I wasn’t compassionate,” Jones said.

He also sent a letter to Gov. Ted Strickland asking him to issue a state order to stop forced evictions for at least the winter months.

“There has to be some attention drawn to somebody that’s going to be thrown out of their houses that doesn’t have anywhere else to go,” Jones said.

The sheriff could face court action if a bank or landlord challenges his refusal to honor a court-ordered eviction.

Jones said he would face any consequences of his order.

[leistb]

WLWT Cincinnati (http://www.wlwt.com/money/18243370/detail.html)
HAMILTON, Ohio -- An area sheriff has ordered deputies to ignore eviction orders when people have nowhere else to live.

Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones said evictions in winter weather and during an economic recession are heartless and those cases should be sent back to the courts and resolved some other way.

Jones on Tuesday ordered deputies to ensure that people have shelter before they're forced out of their homes.

“It doesn’t cost much for me to be compassionate, and I’m not going to cause somebody to die because I wasn’t compassionate,” Jones said.

He also sent a letter to Gov. Ted Strickland asking him to issue a state order to stop forced evictions for at least the winter months.

“There has to be some attention drawn to somebody that’s going to be thrown out of their houses that doesn’t have anywhere else to go,” Jones said.

The sheriff could face court action if a bank or landlord challenges his refusal to honor a court-ordered eviction.

Jones said he would face any consequences of his order.

Good for this sheriff for standing on principles. Who knows why these folks are in foreclosure but I can't imagine they are all there because they were deadbeats in the first place and shouldn't have received a mortgage. Tough situation all the way around.

[sandyd]

Jones on Tuesday ordered deputies to ensure that people have shelter before they're forced out of their homes.


If nothing else, they need a place in a shelter to go to and help finding it before they are tossed into the snow.

[A.T. Hagan]

I have mixed emotions about this. I think it's good to have a sherriff with compassion, but it's possible to go too far in either extreme. How long does it take to reach the point of actual physical eviction from a home? These things don't come as a surprise. It takes months and months of notice after notice after notice before the deputies show up to start carting your belongings to the curb. What was the family doing all that time? Nothing? They should have been getting ready, but instead did nothing.

.....Alan.

[Susie]

Evictions are not allowed during the winter months, here in France.

[Darkimbolc]

These things don't come as a surprise.
Unfortunately, for many it is. There has been case after case of people who are renting a house, paying their rent faithfully. What they don't know is that the owner is being foreclosed on. The moment that the renters find out that something isn't right is the moment the sheriff is knocking on the door.

Right now, with the exception of good people like this sheriff, we are approaching a severe and paradoxical twin of problems - a skyrocketing number of homeless people and an equally growing number of vacant homes. Some talking head on Fox speculated that in the coming year we are going to see major civil unrest including what he called 'squatter rebellions'. If it keeps going like it has been, we will. Individuals like this sheriff are the performing the only action that may prevent something like that.

[Samen]

First Ohio now Illinois

http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2008/10/cook-county-sheriffs-office-to-suspend-mortgage-foreclosure-evictions.html

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said today his office plans to stop serving eviction notices on people who have fallen behind on mortgage payments as well as renters unaware their buildings have fallen in arrears.

He said his action was necessary in light of the national foreclosure crisis that is driving down the American economy.

Dart acknowledged he could be found in contempt of court for ignoring court orders, but said he was willing to risk that to carry out "justice."

He noted that hundreds of Cook County residents each month are evicted after sheriff's deputies show up at their doors, not knowing that their landlords haven't made their mortgage payments.

"The people we're interacting with are, many times, oblivious to the financial straits their landlord might be in," Dart said. "They are the innocent victims here, and they are the ones all of us must step up for and find some way to protect."

He asked banks to send representatives to rental properties being foreclosed on to notify them of foreclosure proceedings and tell them they have 120 days to vacate. Banks now only give such notification to the actual mortgage holders, he said.

According to Dart, foreclosures have risen astronomically over the past year. In 2006, 18,916 mortgage foreclosures were filed in the county, and last year, that number rose to 32,269. This year, Dart is projecting more than 43,000 to be filed.

Dart did say, however, that evictions not related to inability to pay mortgages on time will continue. Such evictions would include renters in apartment building who don't pay their rent or violate lease agreements.

So far this year, roughly 2,000 people a month have been evicted from their homes, and of that, as many as 500 are evicted because of mortgage foreclosures. Dart said about one-third of those people fall under the category of rent-paying individuals who are unaware that their landlord has fallen into mortgage-related foreclosure.


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Being evicted in this county would guarantee you a place in a tent, at least if you tried to detest it to the serif :confused1:

http://www.mcso.org/index.php?a=GetModule&mn=About_Mcso

Welcome to the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office
The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, headed by the famed Sheriff Joe Arpaio, is the most talked about and nationally recognized Sheriff's Office in the country today. Why? Because we are innovative.
No other detention facility in the country, state or county can boast of 2,000 convicts in tents; no other county or state facility can boast of a gleaning program that results in costs of under 15 cents per meal per inmate; few others can say they have women in tents or on chain gangs...

[Susie]

In France, when the landlord goes bankrupt, it isn't the tenants who suffer. The tenant stays in the home until the lease is up (minimum three years), and pays the rent to the treasury instead of the landlord.

[sandyd]

I have mixed emotions about this. I think it's good to have a sherriff with compassion, but it's possible to go too far in either extreme. How long does it take to reach the point of actual physical eviction from a home? These things don't come as a surprise. It takes months and months of notice after notice after notice before the deputies show up to start carting your belongings to the curb. What was the family doing all that time? Nothing? They should have been getting ready, but instead did nothing.

.....Alan.

Say some did know for months....but are the type to freeze in a panic and not function....do we pick up their dead bodies the next day or wait till they thaw in spring?

I do not think they should be given a free ride all winter in the house...hey! We need a new set of assistance workers....to get people to pack up and help them figure where to go....home to family, rent an apt, a shelter.....but safer than putting people out in winter to find them dead soon after....NO Decent Human could stand doing that to a FAMILY...frozen kidsickles can't become acceptable in our society. (Until we are at eating each other SHTF time) :re:

And your wise men don't know how it feels to be thick as a brick

YouTube - Jethro Tull - Thick as a Brick [Part 1/5]

I knew as a teen.....I have NO IDEA how it feels to be thick as a brick....I still don't....but I also do not think anyone who IS 'thick as a brick'....should freeze to death when others can prevent it without risk to their lives.

[janetn]

Didnt this same thing happen in the depression? I seem to remember reading that it got to the point that the sheriffs started refusing to evict farmers from there homes.

[mixin]

If the laws need changing to protect the person being evicted, then they should be changed.

It should not be up to the sheriff to over-ride the judge's decision. I hope since the sheriffs feel so strongly about it, they are doing something to provide extra shelter.

Here, the sheriff always gives the tenant extra time, even though the judge grants immediate possession to the landlord.

Many homeowners are in complete denial over the loss of their home. They will sit right there in their living room until the sheriff comes.

[Susie]

It's not fair to evict a tenant because the landlord hasn't paid. Better to let them stay and use their money from the rent to pay some of the landlord's debt.

Before you know it, tenants will be asking prospective landlords for credit checks.

[sandyd]

Before you know it, tenants will be asking prospective landlords for credit checks.

That would be smart. My dad rents and we have no idea if there is a mortgage....