Balzac wrote, “Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.” If the big flies today are, as they seem to be, the banks, lenders and financial institutions who get away with murder no matter what, and the little ones are us citizens who try our best to play by the rules but still constantly get screwed over, then it seems Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart is aiming to defy Balzac’s cynical definition of the law.
– excerpted from yesterday’s Chicago Tribune:
As the nationwide mortgage crisis puts the squeeze on homeowners, the Cook County sheriff’s office is on pace to evict more people than ever from foreclosed homes.
At least it was until Wednesday, when Sheriff Tom Dart announced he wouldn’t do it anymore.
Dart cited the growing number of evictions that involve rent-paying tenants who suddenly learn their building is in foreclosure because the landlord neglected to pay the mortgage. By refusing to do any foreclosure-related evictions, the hope is that banks will change their policies…
It is the latest, and perhaps most curious, government response to the soaring number of foreclosures. Even as federal bailouts and rescues are under way, the local action provoked a mixture of respect and confusion from housing advocates and banks…
In Cook County, foreclosures are expected to reach a record high of 43,000 this year, compared with 18,916 in 2006.
The sheriff’s office is on pace to conduct 4,500 foreclosure-related evictions, compared with less than half that number in 2006. About one-third of those are rent-paying individuals.
Katrina McMullin, 34, was paying her rent on time, but that didn’t stop a deputy from coming to her Northwest Side door with a notice of eviction. She had received no notice from her landlord.
“How dare they take my rent and still evict me?” said McMullin, who is staying in the apartment after hiring a lawyer. “It wasn’t fair.”…
Kane County Sheriff Patrick Perez said he understood Dart’s motivation, having worked in the civil division dealing with evictions.
“I saw more misery in those two years than I did in the 14 or 15 years of criminal law enforcement before it,” he said.
Some commended Dart’s move as a way to slow things down and allow for a more clearly defined process.
“There a lot of things going on that are not proper procedure, and the Sheriff’s Department has been caught in the middle,” said Kathy Clark, executive director of the Lawyer’s Committee for Better Housing.
The sheriff’s complaint stems from the extra work his office does on behalf of lenders. Dart says he is tired of his deputies showing up at homes for an eviction and finding tenants who are not on the mortgage. Taxpayers foot the bill for that work.
Dart said he will resume foreclosure-related evictions when lenders agree to do their own due diligence in figuring out who is living in foreclosed properties…
and from the Epoch Times:
…Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said he understood he was flouting the law in refusing to have deputies carry out the rising number of eviction requests, but said mortgage holders must be accountable.
“These mortgage companies only see pieces of paper, not people, and don’t care who’s in the building,” Dart said.
“This is at the heart of so many of the problems we have nationwide now, which is the banks’ lack of due diligence, this very cavalier way of dealing with properties and subprime loans,” he said. “Doing very little research, saying ‘It’s just paper, let’s just move it, move it, move it,’ and that’s what has got us here.”
Dart, whose county includes the city of Chicago and encompasses 5.4 million people, said he believed he was the first sheriff in a major metropolitan area to take such a step. Chicago is the hometown of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
The Illinois Bankers Association trade group said Dart was ignoring the law and engaging in “vigilantism.” …
Dart wants banks that foreclose on properties to knock on doors and identify and notify tenants of the eviction notice before sheriff’s deputies carry out the grim task…
Well! What do Juice readers think of this vigilante sheriff’s conduct?
As a landlord, there are volumes of rules that apply to me. It takes months to evict a tenant who has NOT paid rent. Why should it be different for a bank who owns a property? The idea that a person could pay their rent on time every month and suddenly be evicted (not even served, or allowed a few days) is absolutely wrong. The laws a landlord must follow should be the same for a bank, because they have essentially just become the landlord when they foreclose. Have you ever read the classified ads for residential rentals for sale? Most of them state that the current tenants do not know that the place is for sale or even that it is a short sale. These people are being lied to and their rent is going into the pocket of an owner who is not paying the mortgage. It is basically the same thing as when a bank neglects a property. These banks are allowing overgrown yards and pools that turn green and put everyone in danger of West Nile Virus. In any city in our county, the owner of the property would be liable for fines and damages due to these conditions, but the banks get away with it. No one is fining them for breaking laws regarding the maintenance of property or the eviction of PAYING tenants. It’s just another way that the banks get bailed out. Thank God for people who stand up to this, there is no other way that it could change, and I believe it will. The banks took a chance on a person who obviously could not pay the mortgage, it was their chance, they lost, they should pay all of the fines and consequences that they earned.
In case I haven’t made that clear, the man is a hero, the banks are the villians and they should suffer the same consequences as anyone else who evicts tenants, they are outside of the law, not this man. Tenants should copy the eviction laws and return them to the owners so they can learn how to follow them! If he evicted them, he would not be following proper procedure for evicting renters.
Under the current situation I think it makes sense. As I remember landlord/tenant law and it has been years ago. In California you can’t evict someone under those conditions without giving notice. I may be wrong legally but it’s certainly the proper moral thing to do. It’s also just plain decent. While I believe in the rule of law, I believe the sheriff is correct in his response especially under the circumstances right now.
Dart’s a guy I’d love to work for.
Great post, V. It’s nice to start a Saturday reading about inspiring people who do the right thing.
I like the Balzac quote, too. The big ones do get caught, periodically, but it takes a tremendous amount of patience and tenacity sometimes, with often less-than-satisfying results. That said, the challenge of a particularly gargantuan arachnid cannot be a reason to stop trying …
“To protect and serve”, that’s LAPD’s motto. I’d assume there’s something similar for the Sheriff’s Dept. of Cook Co., and that would include protecting the public from acts of fools as well as scoundrels. So, the landlord went bankrupt and the bank foreclosed and became the new acting landlord. The banks would be fools to evict rent-paying tenants, or they would be scoundrels if using the opportunity to evict families in order to up-scale the properities. That’s why we elect our sheriff’s to protect us from scoundrels and fools. We’d still have Corona if we couldn’t.