SAN ANTONIO - An expected surge in evictions because of the now-lifted federal moratorium does not appear to be happening. At least according to one local judge.
Last Friday, Justice of the Peace Pct 4 Judge Rogelio Lopez had a special docket to handle all of the cases that had been in litigation when the CDC order was vacated by the U.S. Supreme Court.
"These are cases that have been pending, almost a year," Judge Lopez said. "We scheduled 100 for last Friday, and my guess had been that we wouldn't see that many because they are older for about a year old or so. And it turned out to be true. So during that year, many of the landlords and tenants had worked things out on their own, many of the tenants had moved out. Many of them had received funding."
Judge Lopez explained he has another set of 100 cases that are set to be heard this upcoming Friday.
"I would expect it would be the same thing because again, these are all, you know, when the Supreme Court vacated the CDC moratorium, we had a 200 case backlog and we broke that up over those two days," Judge Lopez said. "So I don't expect there's going to be anything different this Friday."
We asked Judge Lopez to pull numbers for the number of eviction cases filed in his precinct so far this year.
"In May we had 299 filed. June, we had 311 filed. July, we had 229 filed. August, we had 417 filed," Judge Lopez said. "The Supreme Court on August 26, is when the Supreme Court struck down the CDC order. And then in September, we've had 194. We're halfway through the month. So the numbers have pretty much stayed the same. I can't say that we've had a huge influx of evictions."
Despite the number of filings, Bexar County Constable's Deputies are still evicting renters in San Antonio.
"Some of the CDC filings were after a judgment was entered," Judge Lopez said. "So at that point, if the appellate time has gone, then the only thing left to do is to issue a writ. And so there's no stopping that. And so on those kinds of cases, the constables' office will probably see an uptick on those."
Deputy Duane Weeks at Constable Pct. 3 office on the north side said he has seen a spike in this part of the eviction process.
"It's not a part we like doing but you know it has to be done because it's a court order," Deputy Weeks said. "There's you know, several different types of finances to help them now. The city, state, county all have rental assistance programs available to people, they just need to file. And sometimes people are not aware there are rental assistance programs, or some people just don't do it."
Deputy Weeks added each person being evicted has up until the very last moment to apply for financial help.
Just minutes before driving to evict a tenant Wednesday, Deputy Weeks said he double-checked to see if the person applied for assistance.
"We always on the on the day, we make sure has not been anything filed with CDC or any you know, trying to get some type of assistance," Deputy Weeks said. "I already checked on one today and they have not filed anything to get help. So this is on the books and we'll go execute the route today."
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