Stay on evictions in SC set to end Friday. Housing attorneys have concerns
South Carolina Landlords can file evictions against tenants beginning Friday after a two month stay prompted by the coronavirus.
In March, the state’s Chief Justice Donald Beatty put a halt on evictions though May 15 against renters so that they wouldn’t be without a home as South Carolina forced businesses to close and issued stay-at-home orders meant to stop the spread of COVID-19.
One of the unintended consequences from those closures was massive job losses across the state.
The end of the order means that some tenants who had pending evictions filed against them before March 17 will now see their cases begin to move through the court system starting Friday, according to housing attorneys. Some may even be evicted, Friday. Other tenants who were unable to pay rent during the stay can now have evictions filed against them.
Property managers must give up to two weeks notice that an eviction is going to be filed, according to state law. The notice itself isn’t an eviction. Rather, it simply informs a tenant that an eviction will be filed against a person if an issue such missed rent or a lease violation isn’t corrected, according to housing attorney Nicole Paluzzi.
“There were people that had enough saved up to pay their April rent but couldn’t pay their May rent,” she said.
Paluzzi works with Charleston Pro Bono, an organization that helps people who can’t afford legal services in South Carolina. She said tenants have recieved pre-eviction filing notices in the two weeks before the eviction stay was set to end.
Once an eviction is filed, a tenant has just 10 days to request a hearing to try and stay in the home. The eviction process can take as little as two weeks before a tenant — who loses their case — is ordered by a judge to vacate the rental home within 24 hours. If they don’t, law enforcement can physically remove them from the property.
Charleston Pro Bono has received “broad spectrum of requests” for help in the lead up to the end of the eviction stay, Paluzzi said. The majority of requests are coming from people being serviced notices for nonpayment or lease violations.
She said Friday is going to be a “hard open” for evictions, adding that the court process for evictions is “aggressively fast.”
“Most tenants think they have time to respond but they don’t,” Paluzzi said.
The speed of eviction cases may be hindered by the coronavirus.
Though tenants still have 10 days to protest their eviction by hearing, courts are still looking for ways that people can safety visit the courthouse. Many courts around the state are still operating on limited hours or have limits on how many people can be in the court rooms.
Chief Justice Beatty ordered that all courts are required to accept requests for virtual hearings if a person is uncomfortable with physically attending court. But Paluzzi said that not all courts have figured out how to do virtually hearings.
Some tenants may need to initiate the virtual hearing request, as it may not be immediately offered to them. Paluzzi said one of her clients is medically vulnerable to the coronavirus and shouldn’t be around others at this time. The court, however, isn’t sure how to handle the situation at the moment.
A “substantial amount” of rental properties in South Carolina are protected from eviction by the CARES Act, which was signed into law on March 27, according to housing attorneys. The legislation halted evictions from properties that are federally backed and protected by a variety of laws until Aug. 24.
More than 28% of housing in the United States is backed by the federal government, housing attorney’s have said. In South Carolina, that percentage may be higher.
Housing attorneys say they are concerned that tenants who are protected under the CARES Act may be illegally evicted as the stay South Carolina stay is lifted because of the speed and rules of evictions cases.
Though some property management companies in Columbia have acted in good faith by working with tenants on rent payments, some tenant advocates have accused landlords of threatening, unfair treatment and called for a freeze on rent payments.
“We’re figuring a lot of this out as we go,” Paluzzi said about the end of the eviction stay.
This story was originally published May 14, 2020 at 3:11 PM.