Cleveland Real Estate News

Read this article from CNN’s website  and tell me what you think; is Sheriff Dart a hero or should he be held in contempt of court? It’s hard not to read this article and admire him on some level. He’s frustrated and he sees the human loss in evictions.  I love when an article can give me a V8 moment; I never thought about how tough it must be on sheriff’s around the Country. Evictions are hard under normal circumstances, but add in all the extra foreclosures in many places and it must be heart wrenching and stressful, to say the least.

The article talks about renters who pay their rents on time but can still wind up finding themselves victims facing eviction if their landlord’s wind up in foreclosure. Renters could have done their homework, their due dilgence, and checked out their landlords as fully as possible….and six months later things could be terribly different. 

Last year I averaged one call a month from renters seeking advice, tenants who found themselves needing to start searching for a new home even though they had leases.  Tenants who knew their landlords and never expected something like this to happen.  I even had a few tenants who felt bad about leaving and not giving their landlords any more rent because they felt sorry for their financial circumstances. 

I really liked Sheriff Dart’s analysis regarding us (taxpayers) doing the mortgage lender’s jobs for them. When a bank or mortgage company winds up owning the property, they are responsible for finding out the status of anyone living on the premises. Dart says this became an issue, banks/lenders stopped doing their jobs:

“These mortgage companies only see pieces of paper, not people, and don’t care who’s in the building,” Dart said. “They simply want their money and don’t care who gets hurt along the way.

“On top of it all, they want taxpayers to fund their investigative work for them. We’re not going to do their jobs for them anymore. We’re just not going to evict innocent tenants. It stops today.”

The above details refer to Chicago. How about Cleveland? This PD article from Januaryof this year featured Cuyahoga County Deputy Sheriff Robert Kole. Here, if the Sheriff shows up at your door once, you get a warning.  Second time? It’s an official eviction with locks changing as soon as you are out of the house. The difference is, the Sheriff’s office doesn’t evict renters.  They will advise tenants about some options (who to call) and then they warn them that the City of Cleveland will be notified and is responsible for their eviction, should they still be in the house.

It’s been almost a year since this article was written. Wonder if Deputy Sheriff Kole is sympathetic to Sheriff Dart’s line in the sand.   Peace Out – 3C