Eviction, Charlotte-style

Amid much local conversation recently about economic mobility in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, not much publicity has been paid to evictions, although sometimes it seems as if every civic leader you talk to has read, and is raving about, Matthew Desmond's book, Evicted. (See the PlanCharlotte.org book review here. And yes, I'm among the chorus of fans of the book.)

But at today's Housing Affordability Symposium, I just heard some eye-popping numbers from Ted Fillette, a long-time attorney with Legal Aid of North Carolina who has worked for decades on housing issues. Some of what Fillette said:

• Every year more than 35,000 eviction cases are filed in Mecklenburg County.
• Those cases are channeled through small claims court. Three courts run concurrently daily, five days a week and 50 weeks a year. Each magistrate (the judge for these cases) is assigned 30 to 120 cases per hour.

“What does it take to assume you only need 30 seconds or 60 seconds per case?” Fillette asked. “The presumption is people will not know their rights, can’t find the courthouse, or won’t have a defense.”

Speaking in the small auditorium where I'm sitting, Fillette describes the process: “What happens when 80 or 100 people show up, in a room about this size, and a magistrate calls 100 names per hour?”

If the tenant doesn’t hear his or her name the magistrate writes on a notepad to enter a judgment against the tenant. The tenants aren’t mailed the judgment. The first time many people learn a judgment has been entered against them is when they get a note from the sheriff, and the sheriff’s deputies show up. “They have five minutes to get the kids, pets, medicine, anything they can carry, then the house is locked up,” Fillette said. They have seven days to retrieve their belongings. If they have no place to move their things, the landlord can sell, destroy or throw away all their belongings.

“And there’s a record at the courthouse that stays there forever. ... It’s as much of a permanent scar as a criminal conviction.” Being evicted makes it difficult to ever rent again.

Fillette said that of the 35,000 eviction cases a year, his office will represent about 400 -- and win 95 percent of those cases. “It’s the ones we don’t see that matter.”

Of the people in eviction court, 95 percent are African-American women, or disabled or elderly, he said.

“What’s happening to African-American men in the criminal system is happening to African-American women in the court system.”