Sheriffs and pending evictions

[WorkDoctor]

Very worried that the same radical RW county sheriffs who refuse to enforce public health policies (e.g., mask mandates) will gleefully support landlords and banks to evict decent people whose money vanished from COVID and repubs failure to feel empathy. We need dissenting, moral sheriffs who refuse to evict. Let's see what happens throughout August.

[BamaRefugee]

1. I don't know about where you live, but I'm involved professionally in eviction process in California

and here, someone can stay for many months or even a year before anything really happens, everything has to go through the courts unless the defendant just packs up and leaves.
But we have so many closed courthouses and so many, I'm sure, tenants owing back rent, it could literally take 2 years to actually be evicted.
Not sugar coating anything, it's a very stressful experience, but I don't think there will instantly be entire families out on the street.
I do think , however, that with ever increasing vacancies, and fewer and fewer people able to afford rent or even qualify with an eviction on their record, that rents are going to plummet here, it will be a renter's market.
I'd be interested to hear what others think about that. I'm in Pasadena , California area.

[Grins]

2. Not sure what other option they have?

With guns and masks they say it’s unconstitutional.

How do they argue that after evicting people for centuries?

I wish I still had my copy James Michener’s 1974 novel “Centennial”. Part of that book included farmers destroyed because of the “dust bowl“ storms during the depression. The banks wanted their money and would demand eviction.

When the sheriff showed up he found himself facing the farmer - and all his neighbors - standing opposite them WITH SHOTGUNS. Outnumbered, outgunned, and not being stupid they left.

As I recall it was things like this, an insurrection where the nation would look that and sympathize with the farmer, that FDR took action in favor of the farmers.

[procon]

3. Sorry, but we don't need any more sheriff's who

Think they are above the law. If they refuse to do their job, there are plenty more who will, and then there's another person out of work who will be facing eviction too.

No, I don't want to have any sheriff's making arbitrary decisions about which laws they approve of and which one's they can ignore. Just as they shouldn't be deciding not the enforce gun control laws, they don't get the option to refuse a legal eviction order.

If we want to prevent evictions then the only viable solution must come from Congressional appropriations. While Dems would pass such a relief bill, Republicans will not, and neither will Trump sign it.

People facing evictions are going to get screwed, just like they always have whenever the economy starts cratering and a recession looms near. Homeowners who can't pay their mortgages are going to lose everything, that's a fact and it's not up to some cop to fix a national problem on eviction at a time.