Landlords must be in court for eviction

Landlords seeking to evict tenants in Franklin County now must attend the court hearing, ending what critics called a decades-long practice of “eviction by affidavit.”

The decision Tuesday by an appeals court for Franklin County effectively changes the local eviction process and aligns it with other courts in Ohio and throughout the nation that do not permit landlords to merely submit testimony.

“We were an outlier,” Mayor Andrew J. Ginther said Wednesday as he praised the win by the Legal Aid Society of Columbus.

The group had filed an appeal last year on behalf of a Canal Winchester woman who was evicted during a court hearing in which neither she nor her landlord was present.

The case might sound like a minor procedural matter, advocates said, but they believe it will have a significant effect on the 18,000 or so eviction cases filed each year in Franklin County Municipal Court. Single women and women of color are disproportionately represented in the tally.

“This will reduce the number of filings,” said Kate Mcgarvey, executive director of Ohio State Legal Services Association, and lead to more opportunities for negotiation and settlement.

“We’ve seen cases where the rent was paid prior to the hearing, but the landlord was not there to testify to that,” she said. Mcgarvey also cited times when tenants came to court “money in hand,” only to find no one there to take it.

Franklin County Municipal Court’s administrative judge, Ted Barrows, said the appeals decision is straightforward and based on “solid legal reasoning.”

Less clear for the court is the order from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that suspends the possibility of eviction for millions of renters nationwide who are in dire financial straits because of the COVID-19 outbreak.

But the order, announced by the Trump administration Tuesday, puts forth several conditions for eligibility that are murky. It also does not provide additional funding for rental assistance or absolve tenants of eventually paying what they owe.

“It’s dense with justification, very slim on legal authority, very difficult to understand,” Barrows said. “I think it’s subject to abuse, either intentionally or unintentionally.”

Tenants can fill out a declaration form available on the CDC website declaring their inability to pay and attesting to efforts to obtain government assistance. There also are questions about expected earnings and the likelihood of homelessness.

Documentation is not required before submitting the declaration to a landlord.

The Ohio Supreme Court is expected to issue some type of guidance to courts on the CDC order, a spokesman said this week. Barrows said the local court’s self-help center has put together an information sheet.

But, he said, “This order is directed to tenants and it’s directed to landlords. It doesn’t tell the court to do anything.”

Bill Faith, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio, said that though it’s good for the CDC to acknowledge housing insecurity runs counter to efforts to stop the spread of the coronavirus, the order does not address the debt that Americans face.

The order might not have a lot of effect in Columbus, as there still is emergency funding available to help people who are behind on their rent and facing eviction, said Dimitri Hatzifotinos, of the Willis Law Firm.

Hatzifotinos represents several landlords, including the owner of the Canal Winchester property at issue in the appeals court case this week.

He said he doubts that requiring landlords to come to court will make a substantive difference in the outcome of cases. Already, Hatzifotinos said, Franklin County magistrates rely on the testimony of the tenant — providing the tenant shows up — over an affidavit from the landlord.

“There is a perception that it is not fair. I totally understand that,” he said. “But if you’re down there in the trenches, there is very little practical effect. You can’t take an affidavit and use it against a tenant’s testimony.”

Making landlords come to court won’t stop evictions, Hatzifotinos said. “The best possible solution is to increase the minimum wage so that the burdened households are less burdened.” rprice@dispatch.com @Ritaprice