every one formal eviction, two informal evictions occur. “Even if someone is not necessarily being evicted by a sheriff, people are still being displaced,” Hartley said. “Simply filing against someone is a very stressful and traumatic event that leads to a lot of negative outcomes, both financially and in terms of health.” Two and a half years ago, Wilkins expe- rienced an informal eviction. She was living in a Peoria apartment complex and paying about $800 a month. But each year, her rent increased. Soon, the same apart- ment cost Wilkins $1,400 a month, which she couldn’t afford. Instead of trying to scrape by and face eviction, Wilkins left to live with her daughter. “I felt like I was being bullied out,” she said. “I came very, very close to being evicted. I still live in fear of that today.” Wilkins had somewhere else to go, but many others do not. They stay in their lease but start missing payments, hoping to scrape things together in time to stave off homelessness. When they don’t, they find themselves in eviction court. (Unsurprisingly, Maricopa County’s homelessness problem and evictions problem share root causes.) According to Pam Bridges, the director of advocacy and litigation for the nonprofit law firm Community Legal Services, 80% of tenants in court wind up there after they received a five-day eviction notice for failure to pay rent. In those situations, Arizona is hardly atypical — per the legal site Nolo, 52% of states give tenants five days or less to pay up after an eviction notice. Experts say the entire process, from notice to suitcases on the curb, can take as little as two to three weeks. Eviction court can be a busy place, although it may not appear so at first glance. On the day of her hearing, Juanita was one of four people in the Arcadia Biltmore Justice courtroom. The other three were Judge Driggs, a court staffer and one other tenant facing eviction. The rest of the packed docket was filled by people joining the proceedings virtually. The Arcadia Biltmore Justice Court covers central and East Phoenix and is the fifth-busiest of Maricopa County’s justice courts, according to court data. More than 320 evictions were filed in the precinct in November, and Driggs, who was elected as Justice of the Peace for the court in 2016, has seen 3,870 filings so far this year. As Driggs called the names of plaintiffs and defendants, almost all of the landlords were represented by Colin Clark from Clark & Walker P.C., who attended court via Zoom. (Clark declined to comment for this story.) By contrast, many tenants didn’t attend the hearing at all, and none of those who did — by Zoom or in person — had legal representation. Only a few had a way of paying their outstanding balances. As Juanita waited her turn, tenant after tenant spelled out the circumstances that brought them to court. One man — who was awoken for court by his mother on Zoom, an interaction that was broadcast in the courtroom — begged for understanding as he explained that a series of personal and family situations had left him unable to pay rent. Another woman joined the Zoom call from her car and explained that she had just moved from Oregon after escaping a domestic violence situation. Her apart- ment was crawling with bugs, and her landlord wouldn’t accept third-party payment from organizations who were trying to get her back on her feet. Circumstances such as pest infestation would have been grounds for a claim under Arizona’s Residential Landlord and Tenant Act. But now, it was too late. Because evic- tion proceedings are considered a simple breach of contract instead of a loss of home and safety, Driggs couldn’t consider those factors. In both cases, she ruled in favor of the landlord, setting a date for when a constable would remove both residents. If the woman had acted earlier, Driggs informed her, the Landlord and Tenant Act may have protected her. “I don’t know the law,” the woman responded. Few tenants have anyone to call upon who does. ‘An unfair process’ Like every other tenant in court that day, Juanita did not have a lawyer. Legal resources for tenants facing eviction are available, but there aren’t enough of them. Community Legal Services offers representation for low-income tenants for civil proceedings, with a staff of about 25 attorneys and paralegals who prioritize cases through a triage system. Ones with a legitimate defense, such as a landlord failing to make necessary repairs, go to the top of the list. CLS also negotiates with landlords to give tenants more time to pay. The organization has a Tenant Eviction Assistance Project that helps tenants regardless of income. It’s funded in part by Phoenix and Maricopa County, though the city funding will run out at the end of December. Other services, such as rental assistance programs, are sparse at best as the state no longer funds them “to any significant degree,” Schaffer said. CLS’s goal is to keep an eviction off a tenant’s record, even if it means negoti- ating an out-of-court solution. An eviction record can lead to loss of housing vouchers and damaged credit and can even make it more difficult to secure a job. Unfortunately, the majority of tenants walk into court with no lawyer. In Maricopa County, 94% of landlords have legal representation in court, while only 0.2% of tenants do, according to a 2020 study by the Morris Institute for Justice. That imbalance has clear conse- quences: 76% of eviction cases studied by MIJ resulted in judgments in favor of the landlord, while only 5% were dismissed. “If no one’s there in the courtroom to ensure that your rights are being upheld, and the landlord does have an attorney, it’s already an unfair process,” said Sebastian Del Portillo, the Arizona campaign manager for the labor group Organized Power in Numbers. OPIN wants to change this inequality. Over the past two years, the group has been speaking with members of the Phoenix City Council and city departments about a starting right-to-counsel program, Eviction court is both calm and busy, with most of the proceedings being conducted by video call. (Photo by Morgan Fischer) This year, Maricopa County is on pace to break its 2005 record of 83,687 eviction filings. (Photo by Katya Schwenk) >> p 15
