With an eviction pending and the federal moratorium lifted, Lisa Hughes went to a Tulsa County courthouse on Monday morning to ask a seemingly simple question.
“What’s going to happen now?”
Hughes lost her job after falling ill for several weeks during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic last year. While she’s healthy now and working again, she still hasn’t caught up with the rent payments she missed during her sickness.
An eviction notice appeared on her front door in February, but a federal moratorium kept the courts from hearing most eviction cases.
Until now. The moratorium expired over the weekend, leaving millions of Americans and potentially thousands of Tulsans asking Hughes’ question.
Tulsa County court officials, however, didn’t know what to tell her.
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“They don’t know, either,” Hughes said with tears in her eyes. “I guess I’m going to lose my house, but I don’t know if it’s going to be in two days or two weeks.”
To help both tenants and landlords find answers, a “social services hub” will open Tuesday directly across the street from the Tulsa County Family Center for Juvenile Justice, where eviction cases are heard.
The hub will offer a one-stop shop for several agencies that deal with eviction cases, including Legal Aid Services, the Landlord Tenant Resource Center and the Emergency Rental Assistance Program, which can provide funds to pay overdue rent.
Meanwhile, Tulsa County courts will include a one-page flyer with every eviction notice to let tenants know what resources are available, officials said.
Courts must provide both landlords and tenants with an objective and fair process, District Judge Doug Drummond said.
“But we think it’s important that the parties have information that will allow them to resolve cases before they get to court,” Drummond said, “and if a tenant does get evicted, providing them with access to resources that helps find them other housing.”
The nationwide moratorium didn’t entirely stop evictions, but it allowed tenants to put cases on hold if they could show that the pandemic had caused a loss of income for them. Meanwhile, overdue payments continued to accumulate, with the full amount coming due when the moratorium ended.
In Tulsa County, landlords filed 4,915 cases in the first seven months of 2021, but the court has granted only 1,938 evictions, suggesting that roughly 60% of the cases this year have either been dismissed or are still pending.
The Trump administration first imposed an eviction moratorium last summer, saying it was necessary to avoid a huge wave of evictions as millions of Americans lost their jobs during the COVID-19 shutdowns.
The Biden White House extended the moratorium into this summer but allowed it to expire at the end of July after the U.S. Supreme Court signaled that it likely would be found unconstitutional.
On Monday, the administration moved to pressure state and local governments to adopt policies swiftly to protect renters after the moratorium expired.
Featured video: Mayor G.T. Bynum talks about eviction moratorium
G.T. Bynum Talks Eviction Moratorium during a joint news conference to discuss the end of the eviction moratorium, which is set to expire July 31
