As COVID crisis rages on, KC Tenants group vows to keep shutting down eviction court
When the pandemic set in last year, John Brown III and his family struggled.
Brown owns a cleaning company and does gig work, including delivering food. He lost business quickly. He and his fiancee fell behind on rent at their Northland apartment. They were evicted this summer and lived in a hotel for a while.
They’ve since found an apartment in Gladstone, but it’s too small for the couple and three high school and college age daughters. One daughter is living with a friend, another with her grandparents.
The last few months, Brown said, have been a “nightmare.”
That’s what brought him out to the Jackson County Courthouse on Thursday, where he and fellow tenants called on the Jackson County Circuit Court to halt eviction proceedings during the COVID-19 pandemic that has cost countless Americans their livelihoods.
“There is a pandemic going on, and we’re not taking care of each other,” Brown told the crowd, which swelled to about 70. “The government is taking care of these corporations, but not the people.“
The group chanted, “Every eviction is an act of violence,” shamed circuit court judges who handle housing cases and vowed to make this month “zero eviction January.” The group has been calling on local and state officials since the onset of the pandemic in March to provide relief for tenants. Though they have members from across the metro, KC Tenants has focused efforts on Jackson County, where, before the pandemic, landlords filed roughly 9,000 evictions per year.
Lately, they’ve been more direct: barricading the doors of the downtown and eastern Jackson County courthouses, telling people court is closed. They’ve called in to disrupt conference call proceedings set up by the court to respond to the spread of coronavirus.
They disrupted proceedings Thursday and vowed to keep doing the same.
“If the judges won’t end evictions, we’ll do it for them,” said Ameerah Sanders, a leader with KC Tenants.
The group was there, she said, to “bring the fight to the mother f-----s who started it.”
At the onset of the pandemic, courthouses did shut down. Jackson County residents were protected by an eviction moratorium. But circuit courts began processing evictions again later in the spring.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a moratorium, saying evictions will contribute to the further spread of COVID-19. It was set to expire at the end of 2020, but was extended through January. The moratorium isn’t universal. Tenants have to seek the federal protection. Many don’t.
“Many tenants are being evicted who would qualify for protection, but they don’t know about it, they don’t have access to counsel, so they are evicted despite that fact,” said Gina Chiala, executive director of the Heartland Center for Jobs and Freedom.
Mayor Quinton Lucas has joined KC Tenants in calling on Jackson County Circuit Court presiding judge J. Dale Youngs to reinstate a moratorium on evictions in the county as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on. Already, Lucas said, evictions are traumatic and “both a cause and a condition of poverty.”
Brown’s former landlord didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
But groups representing landlords have pushed back against any eviction moratorium, saying property owners need the rent paid so they can keep up with their mortgages. And they note that an eviction moratorium doesn’t cancel rent. If tenants fall behind, they will still have to pay the rent when the moratorium ends.
“They’re going to have that hanging over their head. Thousands of dollars and months’ worth of debt will come due at that point, and they’re not going to have it,” Stacey Johnson-Cosby, a landlord and president of the KC Regional Housing Alliance, said in December.
Though there is nothing barring landlords from filing eviction cases, they have dropped off during the pandemic. And the number of families removed from their homes at the end of the process was lower for the last few months of 2020 than it was at the same time in 2019.
The Jackson County Circuit Court has maintained that the legislative and executive branches of government create laws and policies, which the judicial branch enforces.
“The Court cannot selectively choose which laws and statutes are to be enforced and which laws and statutes can be ignored,” the statement said in December, adding that the court is following Missouri law and complying with the CDC order.
This story was originally published January 7, 2021 at 1:36 PM.
