CINCINNATI — The Hamilton County Municipal Court will resume in-person eviction hearings June 8, nearly a full month earlier than judges and defendants had planned.
The result, a victory for some landlords who could not evict tenants during the early COVID-19 pandemic, could be “chaos” for lawyers and defendants who were not prepared to argue their cases until July, said Legal Aid Society of Southwest Ohio managing attorney Nick DiNardo.
"There are folks who have court starting on Monday of next week who were told their hearing was postponed,” he said. “And now they're not going to get legally effective notice, and it's going to create chaos.”
The last Hamilton County eviction hearings were held March 15, according to a lawsuit filed by local attorney Chris Finney on behalf of the real estate firm Salvador Properties.
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On May 29, judges Charles Kubicki and Heather Russell announced that Hamilton County courts would open to only a handful of case types during the month of June, including criminal cases, “emergency civil matters” such as requests for restraining orders and “matters that cannot reasonably be accomplished remotely through teleconferencing." The earliest eviction hearings could begin was July 1.
Finney filed his suit days later, arguing that being unable to evict tenants left landlords unable to deal with genuine problem situations in their properties.
“This means not only that landlords can’t clear their properties of tenants who won’t pay rent, but also that tenants who deal drugs, damage property — or even worse criminal behavior — can stay in possession now for more than five months before the landlord can have a hearing to restore possession of the property to him,” he wrote in a short case summary posted to his web site.
Tenant rights advocates across the country have argued since the first pandemic-related layoffs, which hollowed out major customer-facing industries in a matter of days, that affected renters should be granted some legal relief from eviction proceedings and rent payments.
Newly unemployed people in Ohio and Kentucky said they were frequently stymied by broken websites and hours-long call times, preventing them from correcting errors on their applications or receiving the payments for which they believed they were qualified.
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DiNardo noted that Hamilton County has millions of dollars ready to help people avoid eviction by paying landlords the back rent they are owed. That might not be enough for everyone, however — and the nonprofit organizations working to help tenants, including Legal Aid, are overwhelmed with requests for help.
