In a depresed economy , there are few things more rock bottom than losing a homestead, or the shelter over your head. There are also few things more stressful or aggravating than not receiving money due to you or having your property damaged by someone who cannot pay for it, especially if you’re a private home owner renting out a garage apartment to make ends meet.
Caught in the middle between the rock and the hard place is the county — specifically, justices and the peace, who hear eviction trials, and constables, charged with making sure tenants and landlords fulfill their end of responsibilities during the eviction process. What is it like to be caught in the middle?
For the Justices of the Peace who oversee the beginnings of the process, an eviction is usually a standard procedure. Those judges have the job of following the letter of the law and of hearing the case before them, regarding whether a landlord has cause to evict a tenant. There are standard documents that must be filed, notices that must be given and steps that must be taken, said David Cobos, a justice of the peace in Midland County who hears about 10 residential eviction cases a month. He estimated that about half those cases will end in a forced eviction, in which a constable’s deputy serves a writ of possession and gives 24 to 72 hours notice for the tenant to vacate the property one final time. The other half of the time, a tenant will pay his or her rent, somehow settle the dispute with the landlord or leave voluntarily.
In all, the eviction process in Texas can take as little as 20-23 days: three days for tenant to respond to the landlord’s written notice to vacate, a day for the landlord to file the eviction suit in court, eight to 10 days for the constable’s office to serve the tenant with a citation and hearing date, five days after the hearing date for the tenant or hearing to appeal the Justice of the Peace Court’s decision, another day or two for landlord to file the Writ of Possession and for the constable to serve the writ, and then a final day or two to pack up and move out.
“If the tenant hasn’t moved, then the constable executes the Writ of Possession by any means necessary,” Cobos said. “That means going in and forcibly moving the tenant out, and the tenant’s possessions.” That’s when things may get heated.
Once the paperwork process is complete, counties differ when it comes to how to handle the actual move out process. Constables will not be actively packing boxes alongside an evicted tenant, though they are required to stay put while a tenant is packing up, if time has expired on the Writ of Possession notice. If the tenant refuses to pack their items, or has already split the premises but has left items behind, responsibility for those personal possessions falls to landlords.
“We are there (at the home) to protect both sides,” said Williamson County Constable Bobby Gutierrez. “We don’t have a dog in the fight. After we leave, we are not responsible for any items left behind.”
However, exactly how landlords may handle the items and where the items wait rests with the county. While the most urban of counties will utilize bonded warehousemen to store abandoned personal property, those venues are not available in many rural and midsized counties — including Midland and Williamson — so many times landlords are allowed to store leftover items on the sidewalk until the former tenant can retrieve them. In cases of inclement weather or when items are especially valuable, landlords are tasked with finding suitable storage; in either case, items such as alcohol, prescription drugs and guns may wind up in county evidence lockers for safe keeping. When items are left on the sidewalk, the problem then becomes what to do with items that are abandoned; there’s a good chance the items are junk or trash, and in that case, landlords or counties will have to swallow an additional fee for its disposal.
In Williamson County, Constable Gutierrez charges tenants who leave excessive amounts of trash behind with criminal illegal dumping, a Class A misdemeanor punishable by one year in jail. That may sound harsh when a person has just faced the financial and emotional trauma of losing their home, but Gutierrez’s office reserves that action for only the most severe cases.
“Every jurisdiction has to see what works for them,” Gutierrez said about the county’s decision to file and pursue those charges. “We can charge it, but it the county attorney won’t prosecute, it’s a lost cause.”
Senior Deputy Curtis Wallace, who has handled evictions and writs of possession in Gutierrez’s office for four years now, said as far as he can remember, the office has only had to resort to illegal dumping charges three or four times — perhaps a good sign that the threat of such a charge is a good preventative measure.
When residents do leave trashed houses behind, the mess can be overwhelming. Wallace recounted several instances where he stood by landlords and movers as they picked piles upon piles of feces and snake skins and other unsanitary hazards off floors and counter tops. “These places are not clean. … It’s just difficult to believe some people live that way,” he said, adding that in those cases, it’s often the landlord that needs consoling. “A lot of people get left out of a lot of money. … Not only are those tenants behind in rent, they are leaving the landlords with several thousands of dollars in costs for clean up.”
Upon exercising a Writ of Possession, Constables and their deputies often face unknown situations. Conditions in some abandoned homes — such as those that warrant illegal dumping charges in Williamson County — are so dangerous that deputies should be wellversed in the entire array of social services and agencies offered by the county and state.
They may encounter homes in which children have been living in unsafe and neglectful conditions, in which Child Protective Services must investigate. They may encounter an elderly tenant with dementia, in which case Adult Protective Services may need to become involved. They may also encounter a tenant with a mental health problem who is either unable to care for themselves or is more likely to become violent during any forced eviction. Other tenants leave sick and neglected cats, birds, dogs and other animals behind, leaving work for the local animal control officers.
But sometimes evictions result in even greater heartbreak or misfortune. Hidalgo County Constable Larry Gallardo recalled one tragedy in which a man who owned a mobile park home killed himself after being told he was being evicted from the lot he was renting.
“He just thought it was the end of the world,” Gallardo said. “We take no glory in evicting somebody from their property.”
That type of tragedy is uncommon, but becoming more likely. As the American Psychiatric Association publication Psychiatric Services and other media has noted, evictions and debt are indicators for suicide. The correlation is most noticeable in places like New York and California hard-hit by economic scandals and Wall Street failures; the Sacramento County News reported back in July 2008 that one unfortunate sheriff’s deputy twice witnessed homeowners committing suicide “as he approached to do a lock out.”
Most areas in Texas have been protected from that crippling economic duress so far, and not all evictions stem from mounting debt, but constables certainly recognize the need to handle each writ of possession and forced eviction with care and sensitivity so that they can be prepared to handle any worst-case scenario. Fortunately, deputy constables who handle evictions receive extended training so they can perform the work at hand.
“We’ve had all kinds of weird situations,” said Harris County Constable Ron Hickman. One man decided he would rather burn his house down while still inside than be evicted; another man had more than 25 guns in his home. Nothing happened, but Hickman noted that if the man had wanted to go to war, he could have done so. “We encounter drugs and guns and all kinds of intense scenarios, every potential range of human emotion. We’ve had an elderly woman come at deputies with knives …. You encounter all kinds of situations, which are slightly divergent from the task that you are there for.”