Who decides who gets evicted?
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 26 August 2021
⏱️ ? minutes
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Summary
The future of a federal ban on evictions is in the Supreme Court’s hands. But in many cases, whether a person gets evicted is up to a judge’s discretion, as our reporter found in Mississippi.
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A federal ban on evictions has been in place in one form or another since the beginning of the pandemic. But after spending a day in an eviction court in Mississippi, reporter Marissa Lang found it’s often left up to individual judges whether to enforce it.
“So many of these cases are judge dependent, the outcome really varies, not just county by county, but judge by judge,” Lang said. She followed a woman facing eviction — and spoke to the judge who decided her fate.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | There is a question on a lot of people's minds. |
| 0:05.0 | Am I going to be evicted? |
| 0:07.0 | Right now, there's a nationwide eviction moratorium, but nobody knows how long that's |
| 0:16.4 | going to last. |
| 0:21.6 | Up until a few days ago, I thought that this was a decision that belongs to the president |
| 0:26.4 | and to Congress and to the Supreme Court. |
| 0:29.5 | But people who are actually experiencing this afraid that they're going to be evicted, |
| 0:34.0 | they know that the person who is deciding their future is often somebody like this. |
| 0:39.2 | A lot of your tenants have taken advantage of the system, you understand? |
| 0:44.2 | Just a landlord who has to pay bills also. |
| 0:47.0 | They would come in two years ago and a lot of respect for the landlord today. |
| 0:52.1 | They feel like the government owes them, you understand? |
| 1:00.7 | From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports. |
| 1:04.0 | I'm Martine Powers. |
| 1:06.0 | It's Thursday, August 26th. |
| 1:09.5 | The Supreme Court is expected to rule any day now about the future of the federal ban |
| 1:13.7 | on evictions. |
| 1:14.7 | A ban has been in place in some form basically since the beginning of the pandemic. |
| 1:19.4 | One ban expired at the end of July, the CDC soon put up another one. |
| 1:24.3 | Landlords and real estate groups have been challenging the ban in court. |
| 1:27.7 | They say that the government doesn't have this power and that their livelihoods are on |
| 1:31.6 | the line. |
... |
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