Despite COVID-19 outbreak, evictions weren’t halted in most of Kentucky until Friday
Fayette and other Kentucky counties halted evictions Friday after Gov. Andy Beshear said during a Thursday press conference that all evictions should temporarily halt as people are asked to stay home and away from crowds.
Earlier this month Supreme Court Justice John Minton ordered most court proceedings, including evictions, be postponed until at least April 10 to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
But evictions that were ordered prior to the courts shut down on March 13 were being served in most counties —with the exception of Jefferson County — until Thursday, many sheriff deputies and constables said.
Fayette County Constable Edward Sparks said once a judge signs an eviction order, called a writ, constables or sheriff’s deputies have four days to serve the recipient by law. Constables and deputies have no authority to stop the eviction.
Sparks said his office served three eviction orders on Thursday. Two of the tenants had already moved out. The third tenant was in the process of moving because water and other utilities had already been turned off.
Sparks, who is one of three constables in Fayette County, said he had fewer than a dozen evictions this week. Earlier Friday, a Fayette District Court judge declined to sign an eviction order given Beshear’s Thursday comments.
Beshear said Thursday he had not issued an order stopping evictions but encouraged the courts and law enforcement to halt the practice temporarily.
“The judges are just as concerned as we are about the spread of infection in the public and for constables and court employees,” Sparks said. “Everyone is just trying to keep up right now with the governor’s office and what the president is doing. It changes hourly.”
Laurel County Sheriff’s deputies have also been told not to serve any eviction orders, said Deputy Gilbert Acciardo, a spokesman for the sheriff’s department.
“I’m not aware of us serving any this week,” Acciardo said.
Harlan County Sheriff Chief Deputy Matt Cope said the sheriff’s department will also no longer serve eviction notices starting Friday.
Cope said to his knowledge, there were no evictions in Harlan County this week.
“We typically only get one or two a month,” Cope said. “I don’t think we even have any in process right now.”
Jefferson County was the only county to halt evictions earlier this week.
According to the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting, the Jefferson County sheriff’s office served evictions on Monday and stopped Tuesday after getting word from both the courts and Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer to stop.
In addition, President Donald Trump announced Wednesday there would be no evictions or foreclosures of any single-family homes financed through Federal Housing Administration-insured mortgages until the end of April.
An October 2017 Lexington Herald-Leader series found there were more than 43,725 court-ordered evictions in Fayette County from 2005 to 2016.
Sparks said in the vast majority of court-ordered evictions, the tenant has already moved out but the landlord has not yet received the key.
“It’s only about 10 percent” that the tenant is still in the apartment or home, he said.
A longtime housing advocate said the temporary moratorium on evictions is good news.
But housing insecurity will likely escalate over the next several months as job losses mount and household income drops.
“I think this will definitely make things easier for my clients over the next few weeks — but I’m expecting an unprecedented number of evictions to hit when things start up again,” said Art Crosby, the executive director of the Fair Housing Council, a Lexington-based nonprofit.
Crosby said the number of people unable to pay rent is only going to skyrocket in coming months.
“ As much as our community may be struggling to deal with this outbreak, I think we’ll find we’re equally unprepared to handle the fall out that we’ll face in the coming months,” Crosby said.
Sparks agreed.
“What I am really worried about is what we are going to see in May, June and July,” he said.
This story was originally published March 20, 2020 at 1:31 PM.
