The return of the 10-minute eviction

[Zorro]

As the pandemic’s moratoriums come to an end, the man some call ‘Lock-’em-out Lennie’ is once again knocking on doors in Arizona

PHOENIX — The city’s last eviction moratorium of the pandemic had expired and the rent forgiveness program was running out of money, so Lennie McCloskey changed into his bulletproof vest and headed out to work. He climbed into his truck and counted through his daily stack of eviction orders. “Fifteen, sixteen — jeez Louise,” he said as he stacked them on the passenger seat. He strapped an extra magazine of ammunition to his belt and picked up his radio to call dispatch.

“Constable 33, heading out,” he said. “Looks like a busy day.”

“Okay,” the dispatcher said. “Guess it’s back to business as usual.”

Nobody in Phoenix was better or more practiced at the business of eviction than Lennie, who had personally removed more than 20,000 Arizonans from their homes during the past two decades as the area’s longest-serving elected constable. “Lock-’em-out Lennie,” colleagues occasionally called him, because the 65-year-old former judo champion was capable of coaxing tenants out of their homes with subtle intimidation or with grandfatherly kindness. He arrived at each apartment with treats to pacify dogs and stickers to give children. The tenants he ushered outside each day into their first moments of homelessness were often inconsolable, or defiant, or suicidal, or mentally ill, or violent and aggressive, but Lennie was calm. “You have to take your own emotions out of it,” he’d told colleagues during one national training. “It’s our job to carry out the court order.”

Now he looked at the first address in his pile and navigated by memory toward a low-income apartment complex on the outskirts of Phoenix. There were 25 other constables across Maricopa County who spent their days carrying out evictions, but few areas were as busy as Lennie’s district, a six-by-six-mile grid of discount shopping centers and faded stucco apartments that catered to working-class families. The average rent had gone up by 40 percent since the beginning of the pandemic, and now some of the apartment complexes had wait lists and new names like Canyon Oasis, Chateau Gardens, Desert Lakes and Paradise Palms. Lennie pulled up to the leasing office of a 300-unit building and carried his stack of eviction orders inside to the property manager.

https://wapo.st/33I5eex

[dalton99a]

1. "The average rent had gone up by 40 percent since the beginning of the pandemic"

[Beastly Boy]

4. Saw it coming a mile away.The eviction moratorium was a disaster from the start.

It effectively legalized the interruption of all revenues (not just profits) to landlords, while keepimg theit expenses unchanged. Only the landlords with large cash reserves (mostly large corporate landlords) were able to sustain the losses. The smaller landlords, whose rental properties made up a large chunk of affordable housing, were left with few choices: sell out to larger corporate landlords, eat the losses and get out of the renting business, or get foreclosed by the mortgage holders and risk eviction themselves. Each of these developments, separate and together, were sure to lead to just one predictable outcome: greatly diminished supply in available housing (with affordable housing being hit especially hard), consolidation of rental real estate in the hands of corporate landlords and the consequent rise in average rent.

The eviction moratorium never addressed the problem of tenants being evicted, it only delayed the inevitable. And now the shit is hitting the fan all at once: the people being evicted face the market that is far more expensive, far more limited, and far more competitive. The end result: the moratorium has only hurt the people it claimed to be helping.

[Sucha NastyWoman]

2. Why can't sone agency or NGO accompany them on their evictions

And help the affected people find some alternati? It would be less dangerous for everyone.

Wher are the churches?

[Ray Bruns]

3. The Churches are too busy building their mega buildings

and buying private jets to be bothered with the homeless and poor.

It's as almost as they are ignoring Jesus's principles.

[Skittles]

6. um

churches are not interested in people with no money

[Skittles]

5. stickers to give to children he is literally evicting

there is no amount of money that would make me do that job, nope