Fulton suspends evictions for holiday season

Nothing says Happy Holidays during hard times like the marshals knocking on your door to serve an eviction. With record numbers of tenants falling behind and homes being lost to foreclosure, it’s become an increasingly common scene.

One metro county, Fulton, has decided to do something about that, giving some residents a Christmas gift by an at-least three-week ban on evictions. Fulton County Marshal Antonio Johnson said he won’t evict anybody from Dec. 19 through Jan. 5. Commissioners meet on Wednesday and will consider whether they want to extend the ban.

Nearby counties like Cobb, Gwinnett and DeKalb aren’t being so generous.

Each reports no such long term reprieve planned, though DeKalb is planning a three-day break around Christmas and New Years when most of its marshals will be off.

The move is being hailed by Anita Beaty, an advocate for the homeless, who said shelters are being overrun with folks who are being forced from their homes. She suggested a stay on evictions to Fulton commissioners last week.

Commissioner Robb Pitts said he’d take that to his colleagues on Wednesday. He wasn’t sure how much of an extension he would seek.

“It seems to be a real important victory,” Beaty said.

Through the first three quarters of 2008, Fulton marshals had served 5,446 evictions and another 9,196 had been settled before marshals showed up on someone’s doorstep. The county saw more than 31,000 dispossessory cases filed last year.

Beaty said Fulton and other counties need to find a way to keep folks from being evicted and foreclosed on as the recession and housing crisis continue to run their course. She plans to attend the commission’s meeting Wednesday and advocate for an extension.

Not surprisingly, the idea’s being met with resentment and anger by already stressed landlords who say stalling evictions will only make bad situations worse.

“Putting a stay on evictions is going to put a burden on property owners,” said Anne Lackey, who runs a company that manages more than 200 rental homes all over Atlanta. “I certainly understand that during the holiday season nobody wants to put people out. The reality is these people haven’t paid. If you don’t pay, you can’t stay.”

Sheriff’s deputies and marshals across metro Atlanta all say they are seeing a surge in request for evictions that tend to fall into three groups — renters who haven’t paid, folks who have been foreclosed on and not left when the property changed hands and tenants with their rental property under foreclosure.

Because of the surge in work, local officials say they are anywhere from two to six weeks behind on actually serving orders to evict. The standard order gives a tenant one week to leave. But the backlog in service means most tenants really have at least a month or more before marshals or deputies will be at their door.

That doesn’t count the time before the landlord filed for eviction when the tenant was behind on payments or the time for the case to be heard.

In Fulton, evictions cases are heard twice a week and draw a standing room only crowd. The Tuesday and Thursday sessions in front of Magistrate Louis Levenson draw about 250 cases per day.

Johnson, the Fulton marshal, said his office historically offers the holiday break as an act of kindness toward folks in need.

“It’s really hard when you’ve got a mother and kids,” Johnson said. “I tell my staff be understanding, be professional. We have to perform our duties. We can do it with honor and respect.”

Officials in the other major metro counties say there are so many cases pending they can’t delay the process at all.

“If its a work day, we have evictions scheduled,” said Nancy Hobson, with the Gwinnett sheriff’s office. “We’ve got them coming out of our ears. We do as many as we can every day.”

Landlords say any slowdown is going to hurt their business at a time when rents are down, taxes are up, water bills are skyrocketing and non-paying tenants are on the increase because of the down economy.

Brent Sobol of Atlanta, who owns several rental homes and a 344-unit apartment complex off Campbellton Road in south Atlanta, said he has about 20 or 30 evictions pending in Fulton County every month.

The process is so slow that many tenants get weeks, if not months, of free time in his units before marshals show up to escort them out. He added there’s also attorneys fees and other costs for landlords.

“To not allow us to evict tenants we feel are never going to pay is unfair,” Sobol said. “We are not just arbitrarily kicking people out. We don’t like having to file evictions, but it’s necessary.”