Stop the “Assembly-Line Eviction Agencies”

This post originally appeared on Fran Quigley’s blog, Housing Is A Human Right

Some of you may recall last month’s post and Common Dreams article, “Shouldn’t Every Day Be Like No-Evictions Christmas?”  It told the story of how most law enforcement agencies refuse to carry out court-ordered evictions around the Christmas holiday.

Well, the holidays are over.

For those who celebrate, Christmas trees have probably been put out for mulch and decorations boxed up. And on the morning of January 2nd, I was in a court where 51 households, representing 100-plus people including many children, faced eviction hearings. Before the court session began, the judge announced her default get-out-or-else date was January 10th.

One tenant I represented is the mom of three young kids. She started to explain to me that she will be homeless after the eviction but she thinks she has some family members who can squeeze her kids in for awhile. Mid-explanation, she said, “I better stop before I . . .” Then the tears started to fall.

Among the many valuable 2024 New Year’s resolutions in housing is to put a stop to court-ordered travesties like this.

Our clinic partners at Indiana Legal Services recently won a case on appeal from a judge who evicted a tenant. The denial of justice was so stark that the appellate court wrote in its decision, “we hold that the small claims court did not just deny (the tenant) any one due process right, it essentially denied her any of her due process rights.”

Since our clinic contributed an amicus brief that the appellate court cited in its decision, our law school published a brief article about the case for our school website.  

The article quoted my friend, colleague, and housing law legend Professor Florence Roisman saying, “This victory is gratifying, though what is desperately needed is systemic reform to transform these assembly-line collection agencies into entities warranting the title ‘courts.’”

On January 2nd, the assembly line roared back to life.

Way Too Easy

Ironically enough, the truth of Professor Roisman’s observation hit home to me recently in a non-eviction case. On behalf of low-income seniors and persons living with disabilities, our clinic and Indiana Legal Services filed a request for an emergency order, known as a Temporary Restraining Order. We asked the judge to force our local public housing agency to return security that it pulled from their building. (I am limited by ethics rules from writing too much about the case, but you can read about it here and watch a news video here.)

Although the case continues, the judge denied our request for an emergency order.

Obviously, our clients, our partners, and I all disagree with the judge’s decision. But we see where it comes from. In our legal system, it is exceptionally hard to get a quickly-issued order that forces a person or organization to take action, what we call injunctive relief.

Which leads to a question: If it is so difficult to get a court order forcing a multi-million dollar agency to keep spending $1,000 a week to keep a security guard in place, why is it so easy to get nearly a million rapidly-issued court orders each year that evict a family from their homes?

The right answer to that question is: it should not be so easy.

That was the theme of an article in our state bar association magazine written earlier this year by one of our terrific clinic students, Steve Nisi, and my friend and longtime public interest attorney Adam Mueller, with me along for the co-author ride.  You can find the article here. It is directed at an audience of lawyers and judges, but its premise matters to all of us who care about the human right to housing, not to mention equal justice for all.

Our courts have no business acting like the “assembly-line collection agencies” that Professor Roisman rightly calls out. In 2024, and beyond if need be, our clinic and others will keep working to shut down the assembly line—and not just around the holidays.