Evictions piling up in Tennessee with moratorium ended

By Ryan Breslin

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    NASHVILLE, Tennessee (WSMV) — Evictions in Tennessee continue to rise since the CDC moratorium ended in July.

Even though a new moratorium was issued by the CDC, that does not apply in Tennessee because of a ruling by a sixth circuit federal court.

The ruling is leaving many Tennesseans in a bad spot, especially ones that have behind on rent for months.

It means everything is on the table for both tenants and landlords.

Attorney Zac Oswald with Legal Aid Society says people facing eviction need to follow three steps:

Apply for rent relief immediately Go to court explaining your situation to a judge, landlord and attorneys Reach out to an attorney at Legal Aid Society

Both Oswald and the advocacy group Red Door Collective say many people being served a detainer warrant for not paying their rent don’t know what to do and think they have no one on their side.

Because of that, Oswald says these people might not follow the process correctly, and might either skip court or vacate the property and have an eviction on their permanent record, which in turn may prevent you from renting again.

Red Door Collective says they’ve been looking at all the current detainer warrant data, finding that there’s an average of about 150 evictions per week.

In July alone, they say almost 640 detainer warrants were filed with 526 eviction rulings.

“The detainer warrant is meant to be a notification of a court date but so many times we see detainer warrants that are being put on people’s doors and it doesn’t have the court date on it or it will say something like earliest Tuesday which technically means the earliest date the plaintiffs lawyer shows us,” said Jack Marr with Red Door Collective. “We know from the data, the vast majority of judgements that are awarding possession, so awarding the eviction are because, their by default. So we’re tracking the judgements and it’s like 75 percent of the time the reason why people are kicked out of their homes is because they didn’t show up to court.”

That’s why Marr and Oswald say it’s so important to show up to court.

There is no mechanism in the state to expunge an eviction off your tenant record.

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