It happens to hundreds of Oklahomans every month.
Rent is due on the first, but the paycheck hits their bank account on the sixth.
The reality for many tenants is that by then, an eviction notice has already been taped to their door.
Nearly half of all evictions filed in Oklahoma County during the first quarter of this year were dismissed, and, of those dismissed, 18% were dropped before the first court hearing, according to data from the Mental Health Association Oklahoma. This indicates that eviction filings were being used as a form of rent collection, according to the association.
There were 3,982 evictions filed in Oklahoma County from January through March. That means 335 cases were filed and then dismissed before the first court hearing in the county during the first three months of the year.
When the tenant pays and satisfies the landlord, the eviction is dismissed, allowing them to stay at the property. Still, the eviction is on the tenant's record, and court fees can increase their monthly housing cost by 20%, according to a study conducted by the Eviction Lab at Princeton University.
Because of the negative effects of the filing on the tenant, Amy Coldren, director of advocacy and communications for the Mental Health Association Oklahoma, questioned whether those evictions were even necessary at all.
“It is resolving before the hearing, yet the tenant is responsible for the filing fees, the attorney's fees and they have this eviction of their record permanently,” Coldren said. “Now, something that likely resolves on its own has serious implications for the tenant.”
Rent Collection
Katie Dilks, executive director of the Oklahoma Access to Justice Foundation, said the argument from landlords and landlord attorneys is often that they do not want to engage in this process, but it’s a way to get tenants to pay rent. However, she said that there’s an underlying problem with that argument.
“It can be hard when you’re paying a 20 or 30% premium on your rent to build the stability or savings that you might need to avoid that going forward,” Dilks said. “The more you are increasing these costs on people on a month-over-month basis, the harder it is to pay their rent on time.”
Tulsa County’s total number of evictions dismissed last year mirrored the new numbers from the Mental Health Association Oklahoma.
Last year, 45% of all evictions in Tulsa County throughout the year were dismissed, said Eric Hallett, an attorney with Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma.
Hallett said that Oklahoma’s fast, cheap eviction process makes it easy for landlords and property managers to use eviction to collect rent. The eviction filing will now follow the tenant and make it harder to secure housing in the future. It also indicates the problem could have been solved outside of court.
“They’re using this cheap and easy process to strong-arm people,” Hallett said.
A 2020 study conducted by the Eviction Lab found that landlords across the United States use evictions to collect rent, often resulting in serial evictions — where landlords file on one household multiple times without removing the tenants in order to seek rent and additional fees.
Serial eviction filings were more common in mid-range rental markets — areas with rents between $1,200 and $2,000 per month — and in counties that made the legal process of eviction fast and cheap, according to the study.
Fast and Cheap
Oklahoma County, and the greater state, is one of the places where the legal process of eviction is fast and cheap. The state also experiences its share of serial evictors.
In the state’s counties with the highest eviction rates — Oklahoma and Tulsa — the filing fee for an eviction can be as low as $58. And, Oklahoma’s eviction timeline is one of the fastest in the country. Landlords can serve a five-day notice to quit the day after rent is late in the state. After the five days are up, an eviction is served. The tenant now has an eviction filed against them, and can find themselves in court three days later.
Hallett said an extended timeline on the five-day notice to quit could be a way to avoid landlords using the courts as a rent collection tool.
Eviction Lab also suggested an extension as a solution to serial evictions in their report. Additionally, the report suggested that more expensive filing fees could deter landlords from using eviction as a form of rent collection.
“The evidence is even stronger on the cost of an eviction,” Dilks said. “Filing fees are directly correlated with filing rates. When you have higher filing fees, you have lower filing rates because it changes the financial incentives and considerations for the landlord. When it’s cheap to file an eviction, that can be seen as a rent collection tool.”
Solutions
Dilks said that it is difficult to know exactly the circumstances of the eviction filing being dismissed. She said it could be that the tenant self-evicted, but also that some are resolved because people are paying.
“I think that is an indication of what an extended timeline could do,” Dilks said. “If it (an eviction) got filed on the 5th or the 6th, but court wasn’t until the 11th or 12th, and it got paid somewhere in between the 6th and the 12th, what would it have looked like if the filing date wasn’t until the 10th or the 12th? There’s a very real world where that household would have been able to pay that late rent with just the late rent fee without all of these other things stacked on top of it.”
Hallett said that an extended timeline could help, but also that mediation before an eviction could be a step toward avoiding using the process as a rent and fee collection tool.
One step to preventing eviction suggested by the United States Department of the Treasury is mediation. The treasury used Massachusetts’ two-tiered eviction system as an example.
“In the first tier, landlords and tenants work with a mediator who can direct them to ERA resources to cover qualified rental arrears,” the Department of the Treasury wrote on its website. “This state-funded program also engages legal aid services, as well as housing reinstatement services, for those cases where tenants ultimately experience eviction.”
The state of Massachusetts details how mediation benefits both landlords and tenants. For landlords, mediation can help resolve a case of rent arrears more quickly and reduce costs associated with an eviction. And for tenants, mediation can help work out if arrears can be paid off and how, and allow them to stabilize tenancy, according to the State of Massachusetts website.
Hallett said solutions like mediation have proven to be successful.
“Mediation is successful,” Hallett said. “But, it’s only successful in states that require mediation before the eviction filing.”
Oklahoma Watch, at oklahomawatch.org, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers public-policy issues facing the state.
