EVICTION TACTICS SQUEEZE RENTERS

AJC analysis shows landlords increasingly use eviction filings to collect late rent

Angela Claxton lived at the Lilburn apartment complex The Columns at Paxton Lane for six years, but it was never easy.

A single mother, Claxton worked multiple jobs to keep her son in Shiloh High’s school zone, but the rent rose year after year. Inevitably, she fell behind, and the management filed to have her evicted.

It happened 32 times.

Claxton never saw her belongings hauled to the curb. Instead, she scraped together the rent, paid the court costs and late fees that came with each filing, and managed to stay put.

The complex felt safe, and it was convenient to her primary job as a certified optometric assistant with Emory Healthcare. Staying meant her son’s education would not be disrupted. Her landlord, Marietta-based ECI Group, took payment through its online system and dismissed the evictions, until it just got to be too much for Claxton.

“This last time was the only time I left the complex,” she said. “I just couldn’t afford to be late on my rent on top of the court fees.”

Claxton is far from alone in facing the threat of eviction over and over again while trying to maintain a stable home.

An unprecedented Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of eviction filings from Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, Gwinnett and Clayton counties found that more than a third of the 1 million cases filed since 2010 were serial filings — filings made within a year of one another at the same property, against a tenant with the same name. The AJC found more than 70,000 cases where rent- ers got three or more eviction notices at the same property.

And such serial filings are becoming more common in recent years, rising 17 percent from 2010 to 2016, even as overall eviction filings fell with the improving economy.

The data on serial filings suggests that landlords are increas- ingly rely i ng on Ge o rgia’s decades-old laws as leverage to collect overdue rent rather than an avenue to remove tenants.

“Eviction is not being used as the court of last resort. It’s being used as the court of first resort in many of these cases,” said Matthew Desmond, head of Princ- eton University’s Eviction Lab, which released data this year showing Georgia is a top state for eviction cases.

For many landlords, the AJC found, eviction filings are standard operating procedure, a process automatically launched when a tenant is late on rent, even by a few days.

Falling behind one month often leads to a grueling cycle of repeat filings and eviction fees, leaving a tenant thousands of dollars in the hole with a ruined financial record in the process. Tenants carry those filings with them, making it harder to rent some- where else, even if they were never actually evicted.

“You’re not putting someone out on the street, but you are threatening to,” said Georgia State University professor and housing expert Dan Immergluck. “It causes housing instability, whether it’s going to directly put them on the street in the next few weeks or not.”

Set against thebackdrop of an affordable housing crisis in the Atlanta metro area, the data on serial evictions signals distress among Atlanta’s blue-collar workers, whose rents are increasing faster than their wages.

The housing market in Atlanta depends on tenants paying their rent — and most do. But for thousands of working-class tenants, covering the rent and other bills is a monthly scramble. Repeated filings threaten to push strug- gling families even further to the margins of poverty.

The AJC also found wide variation in eviction filing rates among landlords it identified, suggesting business practices also play a key role in how often landlords file eviction notices.

Landlords are aided by Geor- gia’s eviction laws, which are among the most favorable in the nation. With strong state laws backing them up, landlords said it would be foolish not to file eviction papers on tenants as soon as possible, even if the aim is to collect rent rather than eject a tenant.

The sheer volume of eviction filings — more than 130,000 a year, or one for every five rental households — shows that they are a key feature of an increasingly unaffordable rental market that includes more than 1.4 million Georgians across five counties.

It also suggests that landlords sign tens of thousands of leases every year at rents tenants cannot afford, a risk-reward calculation by landlords that maximizes profit but sets some tenants up for failure.

‘We are not a social work organization’

Claxton’s landlord, ECI, had among the highest filing rates in 2016 among medium-to-large apartment operators identified by the AJC. According to the AJC’s data, ECI filed about 1,100 evictions that year, or just under one eviction for every two apartments it operated — nearly twice the metrowide rate.

ECI was also among the most likely to file on a tenant it had already filed on before — twothirds of its filings were against tenants who already had been filed on within the past year.

CEO Seth Greenberg said his company isn’t the heartless landlord that one might suspect from the AJC’s data. He emphasized ECI rarely removes tenants and said carrying out an eviction is a last resort. He suggested his com- pany might just be more willing to work with tenants who fall behind, while some of his competitors remove a tenant as soon as possible.

ECI allows tenants to stay, if they pay rent, late fees and the court costs associated with filing an eviction.

At the same time, ECI protects its rights as outlined in its leases, and the courts are the way to do that, he said. If the rent isn’t in by the 10th, man- agers are instructed to file for eviction, he said.

“We provide housing in exchange for rent,” he said. “We are not a social work organization. We try to be empathetic. We try to be sensitive and be humane about it, but we have a job to do.”

Greenberg said landlords can decide to keep a tenant who is late with rent. But from his per- spective, he said, not filing for eviction when a tenant is late “would be folly and foolish.”

From her perspective, Clax- ton said, ECI wasn’t unpleasant when she was late — just “per- sistent.”

The eviction notices came regularly, tacked to her door and sent through the mail. Georgia law gives a tenant seven days after receiving a notice to file an answer with magistrate court. If the person doesn’t, the evic- tion goes through. Answering the notices gives tenants a little more time to work out payment before they end up in court with their landlords.

Court costs and late fees ballooned Claxton’s rent from $1,160 to $1,400. Because she was late, she had to pay online, which included a processing fee that got more expensive the longer she waited to pay.

“If it came down to it that you couldn’t pay online, you had to bring a cashier’s check,” she said. “I think I did that twice.”

While scraping together the rent, she fell behind on her car payments. Her father was dying of cancer, and her regular trips to care for him in Jackson, Miss., further strained her finances.

“It’s definitely a stressful way to live. They weren’t in the practice of working with you,” she said. “It wasn’t because they wanted me to move. They wanted me to pay.”

Getting tenants to stay and pay is the point, Greenberg said. But he acknowledges that it can put people in a difficult financial position.

“Just like if you had a credit card bill and you have that 18 percent interest. Once you get into the cycle, it’s really hard to get out of it,” he said. “But part of the reason for us that we have the fees that we have is to make it very attractive to pay the rent.”

For tenants like Claxton, the financial burden is great. She was drawn to Paxton Lane by its $700 “move in special” for a two-bedroom apartment, but the rent rose steadily before settling at $1,160 by her final year.

To keep up, she took a weekend job at LensCrafters and worked in the nursery at her church on Sundays. She also took out a payday loan.

“You try to make things work,” she said. “It’s just a vicious cycle. Everything is always late.”

Her 32nd eviction was her last. She was deep in debt and headed toward bankruptcy. She moved in with a friend for a few months, but the eviction filings left her financial reputation in shreds.

In April, she moved in with her mother in a house her sister owns in Clayton County. Her son is completing his education at the Fort Stewart Youth Challenge Academy outside of Savannah. He graduated in June and plans to join the Air Force, she said. She considers herself lucky. “Some people just don’t have what I have, a sister with a home to move into,” she said.

‘There is nothing I can do’

About a dozen people were scattered around Courtroom 1200 C on a recent, rainy Wednesday when DeKalb County Magistrate Judge Corneill Stephens took his seat and launched into a practiced spiel.

“In a bi l ity to pay is not a defense,” he told the group.

Lost your job? Car broke down? Got sick? Arrested? None of that matters if you didn’t pay your rent.

“Those are not legal defenses for an eviction action,” he said. “There is nothing I can do about it.”

Federal data shows working class families in Atlanta struggle to find rent they can afford while still providing for other basic needs.

Data from the U.S. Census shows a majority of households making between $20,000 and $50,000 are spending a third or more of their income in rent, a level often referred to as “rent burdened.”

The average hourly wage in Atlanta increased just 4 percent from 2015 to 2018, according to federal labor statistics. Meanwhile, the average rent has increased 19 percent over the same period, from $1,103 in 2015 to $1,309 today.

Once an eviction is filed, a landlord could have a nonpaying tenant legally removed in as little as 17 days.

Even though filings, court dates and the schedule of the county marshal usually drag out the process, no state moves faster than that.