Our first instinct was to tell Dart he can't take the law into his own hands—his job is to carry out the orders of the circuit court. But as we look at this, Dart has a reasonable case to make—for a short time.
This isn't simply the sheriff riding up on a white horse to protect down-and-out citizens from losing their homes. Dart understands that his office is charged with enforcing lawful evictions.
But he's tired of his deputies showing up to serve eviction papers, only to find tenants who had been paying the rent faithfully, with no clue that the building was in foreclosure and no warning that they'd have to find another place to live. In other words, he's tired of his deputies doing the lenders' grunt work and the taxpayers getting the bill for it.
State law that took effect Jan. 1 requires that renters be given 120 days notice before being forced to move by a foreclosure. But Dart says the banks often don't bother to determine who is living in the house when obtaining an eviction order. When deputies go to the house and find a tenant who isn't named on the papers, they have to halt the eviction and go back to court—at which time the banks are happy to take the names of the current occupants, add them to the order and start the 120-day clock.
You see, there is no reason for the head law enforcement person in Cook County to ENFORCE THE LAW because sometimes his department finds that enforcing the law is difficult. Dart has put an end to all evictions because on some of these evictions he finds renter who have no idea the mortgage that their landlord is paying is behind. In many of those cases, the bank has given the renter no notice. New state law provides that renters have 120 days notice to move out when their landlord is behind.
I would call this throwing the baby out with the bathwater, however, let's face it, Sheriff's win no friends enforcing eviction notices. As such, this is throwing the bathwater out with the really bad bathwater.
It appears that both the Tribune and the Sheriff Dart seem to believe that he is helpless in ever determining prior to showing up at a home whether or not that property is occupied by the actual mortgage holder. As such, he has taken the "logical" step of never showing up. I would like to help Sheriff Dart in this capacity then. Rather than simply putting a moratorium on all evictions. Maybe, the Sheriff's department should demand a copy of the Note and Mortgage from the underlying mortgage that the eviction notice is held to. This way a quick reading of the documents could determine of this property is the primary residence of the borrower or if it is an investment property. If the Sheriff's department determines the mortgage is tied to an investment property, then they can contact the bank prior to the eviction to determine if the renter has been notified.
I suppose when you work in government, rather than problem solving, grand standing is the first instinct. I really doubt that Dart's motivation had anything to do with attempting to use his office efficiently. He may not be a mortgage professional, but I doubt very much that he really thought there was no way for him to determine whether or not there was a renter or owner in a property. I believe he put this moratorium on because he didn't want to be seen as the Sheriff that is throwing folks out of their homes during a period of economic collapse.
Of course, there are all sorts of unintended consequences to law enforcement not enforcing the law. For instance, the underlying problem in this crisis is that far too many people aren't paying their mortgages back. Well, here in Cook County, mortgage holders have just been given another reason not to pay their mortgages back. What will anyone in Cook County behind on or struggling with their mortgage think of this move? Of course, it will give them even more reason not to pay their mortgages back. By doing this, Sheriff Tom Dart has made his own small contribution to pouring gasoline on the flame of our economic crisis.
2 comments:
Your posting is way off. Why should the sheriff's department do the banks work for them? It's not the responsibility of the sheriff's office to determine whether a property is an investment property or not and to determine who lives in the building. Dart just decided that he will no longer waste the department's resources serving notices that ultimately shouldn't have been served because proper notification hadn't been given. Not serving notices was not intended to be a long term solution anyway, it was to get the courts to address the issue of the banks non-compliance with the law. As of today, that's no longer an issue and the sheriff will go back to serving notices.
Frankly, once someone learns how to read a Note, you would know that the amount of work is literally half a minute. My point was that Dart's move was political grandstanding, which I still believe, however I recently wrote a follow up giving the Sheriff credit for making the system more effective. That said, everything he did, he could have done without the political grandstanding which is what I objected to.
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