The pandemic hasn't stopped one of Oklahoma's most prolific evictors from suing tenants

The judge read the names of each of the Cobblestone Apartments tenants facing eviction to the nearly-empty courtroom, repeating each one three times. Each short pause between names was greeted with silence, and a default judgement for the landlord was declared.

None of the 14 tenants from Cobblestone Apartments facing an eviction hearing on June 10 showed up to their court hearings at the Tulsa County Juvenile Center, where eviction hearings have been held since shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic began to spread across Oklahoma.

Had they shown up, most tenants would have been eligible for free legal counsel and, due to the ongoing federal moratorium on evictions, more time to pay their rent without an eviction judgement against them.

In Tulsa County, most people do not show up for their eviction hearings, which gives the process an assembly line-like process. There were 102 eviction hearings scheduled for that day.

Read more: https://www.readfrontier.org/stories/the-pandemic-hasnt-stopped-one-of-oklahomas-most-prolific-evictors-from-suing-tenants/