Evictions in Shelby County highlighted in national study which shows there's work to be done | Opinion

• Cindy Ettingoff is chief executive officer of Memphis Area Legal Services.
• Ron Flagg is president of the Legal Services Corporation.

Although the delivery of COVID-19 vaccines offers a glimmer of hope in 2021, tens of millions of U.S. households face another life-threatening enemy—the nationwide eviction crisis—that could undermine our recovery and prolong the sickness and death caused by the pandemic.

Locally, more than 26,000 eviction notices were filed in Shelby County in 2019 alone, with 10,000 additional notices filed in the final six months of 2020. While President Biden has extended the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s eviction moratorium through March, this is only a stopgap measure.

The CDC order doesn’t halt evictions, just kicks the can down the road and highlights the need for a more systematic approach to what the federal Legal Services Corporation calls the “patchwork nature” of eviction laws at the state and local level.

This wide variability in eviction laws, and the barriers such inconsistencies pose to ensuring equal access to justice, is the focus of a yearlong study by the Legal Services Corporation—the nation’s largest funder of civil legal aid—mandated by Congress.

Notably, the study’s first research brief, released Jan 21, focuses on Shelby County not because we are an outlier, but because the challenges we face here in greater Memphis are emblematic of the broader barriers to fair representation in landlord-tenant disputes.

The study's findings

In Shelby County, eviction cases can be dismissed on a number of grounds, for example, if the landlord doesn’t show up in court, but only if a tenant knows to make the request. Without legal assistance, few tenants would know this basic legal right.

In addition, landlords are not required to directly inform their tenants of an eviction commencement. Instead, a sticker notice can be placed on the dwelling door. As a result, tenants may not even be aware of the scheduled court date to contest a proposed eviction.

Legal Services Corporation's review of Shelby County court data shows only 1.3% of the county’s eviction cases from 2016–2019 resulted in a clear ruling for the tenant.

That statistic is both jarring and predictable, given that an estimated 90% of tenants don’t have a legal advocate by their side: the Constitutional protections that guarantee criminal defendants the right to an attorney don’t extend to civil cases.

Other variations in eviction laws further stack the deck against those facing eviction. In neighboring Fayette County, filing an eviction case costs $32 more than the $144.50 filing fee in Shelby. Research shows lower fees can encourage the filing of frivolous and serial eviction notices. South Carolina, where filing fees run as low as $30, currently has the highest statewide eviction rate.

And while being a victim of domestic violence is considered a permissible legal defense here in Tennessee, that is not the case in other states, including Iowa and Ohio.

As Congress prepares to consider a $1.9 trillion relief plan that includes emergency rental relief, firing up America’s eviction machine at any time during the pandemic could prove deadly.

In a new study on housing as a pandemic mitigation strategy, published in the Journal of Urban Health, researchers from Columbia, Yale and Wake Forest University determined that eviction increases the risk of COVID-19 infection and spread and perpetuates health inequity among people of color.

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Eviction is a predictable driver of COVID-19

Eviction results in increased homelessness and forces families to stay in shelters, in cars, or with friends and families as they double up and surf from couch to couch. This type of overcrowding and transiency increases COVID-19 transmission. Adding as few as two new members to a household can as much as double the risk of respiratory illness like COVID-19.

To be clear, Memphians have stepped up to address this surge. In June, a partnership among local government, legal and housing agencies established the Eviction Settlement Fund, a $2 million program that pools federal CARES Act relief money, private donations and in-kind support to provide emergency rental assistance to tenants while working with landlords willing to accept negotiated settlements.

The emergency relief effort has kept 1,200 households from losing their homes. The need, of course, is far greater.

Similarly, the Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts l December approved a new effort to reduce the pandemic-driven backlog of civil cases via court referrals to mediation, with judges encouraged to give “top priority” to cases with parties not represented by attorneys.

With a new administration taking office in Washington, and, especially as the pandemic grows deadlier by the day, our country must aggressively defend against the scourge of eviction, and the health inequity it perpetuates.

As Memphis takes the national eviction crisis spotlight, so too should the need for greater access to justice among our most vulnerable.

Cindy Ettingoff is chief executive officer of Memphis Area Legal Services.

Ron Flagg is president of the Legal Services Corporation.