Sheriff in Chicago Ends Evictions in Foreclosures By JOHN LELAND Published: October 8, 2008
Law enforcement officers in Chicago will no longer evict residents from foreclosed properties, Sheriff Thomas J. Dart of Cook County announced Wednesday.
The department was on pace to conduct 4,700 foreclosures this year, nearly triple the number from two years ago, Sheriff Dart said.
Housing advocates said that they thought the measure was the first of its kind, but that in recent years, several sheriffs and judges around the country had taken other steps to slow foreclosure proceedings, like requiring lenders to produce titles proving they owned the properties in question. In Philadelphia this year, Sheriff John D. Green temporarily suspended sales of foreclosed properties.
Sheriff Dart said he took the measure because an increasing number of the residents being evicted were renters who might have been dutifully paying their rent, and might have had no knowledge that the owner was behind on the mortgage.
Under a new Chicago law, renters are entitled to a 90-day grace period, starting at the time a foreclosure sale is confirmed, before they can be evicted.
Sheriff Dart said the families in foreclosed properties were often not notified that they would have to leave, and were not given this grace period. Sometimes their first sign of trouble was the appearance of deputies at the door, demanding that they leave.
"It started with just a couple cases like that, but they kept multiplying," Sheriff Dart said. "Just in the past month, about a third of the people we were asked to evict were under very questionable circumstances. It got to the point that enough was enough."
Officials at the national Mortgage Bankers Association were unavailable for comment, a spokesman said. Officials at the Illinois Mortgage Bankers Association did not return calls seeking comment.
On a recent case, deputies were called to evict residents at a foreclosed building on North Spaulding Avenue, and arrived to find six families who were all paying rent to the landlord.
"All the time we paid every month, he never said nothing," said Alma Aquino, who lived in one unit with her husband, their two children, and Mrs. Aquino's mother and sister, for a rent of $850. "My husband tried to explain, but the sheriffs said we can't talk, we need to evacuate."
The family ended up staying, and Sheriff Dart, who has supported legislation to protect residents in foreclosures, soon stopped evictions.
Sheriff Dart said the evictions had taken an emotional toll on his staff. "It's one of most gut-wrenching things we do, seeing little children put out on the street with their possessions. And the hard part is that the parent played by all the rules, and they're being traumatized."
Nationally, only about 10 percent of residents in properties with subprime mortgages — the ones most likely to go into foreclosure — are renters, said Eric Halperin, director of the Washington office of the Center for Responsible Lending, an advocacy group. But in some cities the figure is much higher. Daniel Lindsey of the Home Ownership Preservation Project run by Legal Assistance of Chicago, estimated that half of the city's foreclosures involved renters.
"This is a big deal in the sense that it shows the pressures local governments are under when they're forced to carry out those foreclosures and evictions," Mr. Halperin said. "It's another example of how the foreclosure crisis is overwhelming our institutions. Homeowners and renters can't get the relief they're entitled to under the law."