Allegheny Dwellings in Fineview is one of several Housing Authority City of Pittsburgh complexes where tenants are facing eviction for unpaid rent. (Photo by Eric Jankiewicz/PublicSource)
District Judge Jehosha Wright has taken a go-slow approach to ousting public housing residents as the authority looks to address hundreds of thousands in overdue rent. Ultimately, eviction can hinge on the judge as much as the law.
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Long before he joined Pennsylvania’s minor judiciary, Jehosha Wright saw firsthand that some magistrates take a by-the-book approach to cases.
“When I first ran into the district judge position or understood the role, at least a little bit, it was when I wasn’t going to [high] school,” Jehosha Wright said in a 2021 interview, when he was running for district judge. “When you don’t go to school, for truancy, you go see this district judge and it depends on who you get, what type of results you get. In my case when I went to go see the district judge, it was more of an open-and-shut type of thing.”
Wright’s own style was anything but open-and-shut in August and September as he heard eviction cases filed by the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh [HACP] against tenants.
Wright has been one of at least four district judges experiencing unusually high numbers of landlord-tenant cases — which can end in evictions — filed by the authority. Many of the tenants facing eviction racked up thousands of dollars in overdue rent, according to court filings.
On the morning of Aug. 5, Wright called each tenant into his East Allegheny courtroom, where they were met by an HACP representative, a defense attorney from Ebony Law or Neighborhood Legal Services and one or two representatives from RentHelpPGH, an advocacy group that helps connect people facing evictions with federal rental assistance left over from the COVID crisis. The two legal groups and RentHelpPGH are part of a free legal defense effort called the Lawyer of the Day program that aims to connect people facing eviction with legal services and rental aid.
Tracy Terry, HACP’s assistant site manager for Northview Heights and Allegheny Dwellings, represented the plaintiff.
That day, Wright rescheduled — “continued” in court speak — a majority of the cases to later dates in an attempt to help tenants get connected to rent assistance programs with the help of Harmony McDonald, a court research navigator with RentHelpPGH.
Typing away on her laptop in court, McDonald told Wright which resources tenants had access to or, as often happened, that the tenant had already exhausted their options.
As Wright postponed decisions in case after case, the authority’s manager seemed to despair.
“The agency doesn’t want me pushing court cases out that far,” Terry said. “Over the years, residents had opportunities to receive assistance and they chose not to pay after receiving assistance.” Terry expressed concern that rescheduling eviction hearings will encourage people to continue to not pay rent.
Wright responded: “If there’s rent help eligibility, I want to continue.”
Rent aid ‘pot has dried out’
In an interview after eviction hearings on Sept. 18, Terry said the housing authority is trying to keep people in their apartments, a task that has become more difficult with fewer dollars available for rental assistance.
“As funding was available, [HACP] leadership said, ‘Don’t file evictions,’” Terry said. “The pot has dried out now and we still need to collect rent. [Tenants] are not quite understanding we’re back to normalcy.”
During the shutdown, there were multiple sources of funding for rental assistance but as COVID-era funds run out, some rental assistance programs have not been replenished.
Terry said that pre-COVID, “all these folks used to pay rent” and when she reviewed their rental ledgers, she noticed that these same tenants usually paid their rent on time.
“The realization didn’t hit that they need to pay and that’s what we’re trying to do with these evictions.”
Different judges do different things. My court is just different.
District Judge Jehosha Wright
A number of eviction hearings observed involved issues regarding the tenant’s income level, which is used to determine the rent. Often, a tenant will hit a temporary high in their income, triggering an increase in rent. But if a tenant suffers a loss of income, the rent will not go back down until the tenant notifies the housing authority.
“If income goes down you must report it,” said Caster Binion, the authority’s executive director. “We don’t know. It’s based on what residents tell us. So people accumulate back rent” when they fail to tell the property manager about changes.
Eviction hearings typically favor landlord plaintiffs, according to RentHelpPGH. Typically, only about 10% to 14% of eviction cases in Allegheny County lead to favorable decisions for the tenant. But the post-COVID lawyer program brought those positive outcomes up to 53% for tenants who got that representation over a 10-month period ending in August 2023.
In Wright’s courtroom, PublicSource observed 27 eviction hearings involving authority tenants on three separate dates in August and September. In three cases, Wright ruled in favor of the plaintiff either through an order of possession, which allows the landlord to remove the tenant, or as a pay and stay, which requires a tenant to pay what is owed in order to remain in their apartment.
“We believe in collecting rent,” Binion said. “For the last 36 months we could not evict anyone. Whole lot of residents took advantage of that.”
Moratorium extended, but now ended
Binion said the authority extended the federally-mandated eviction moratorium enacted during the 2020 shutdown for an extra two years. That came to an end in April as the authority resumed filing evictions against tenants who weren’t paying rent.
Since April, the authority submitted 183 landlord-tenant filings, according to Anthony Ceoffe, HACP’s real estate asset manager.
Binion said that while the authority resumed eviction filings, they still want to help people stay in their apartments. To that end, they’ve entered into 238 repayment plans with residents, more than half of whom have whittled the amount owed to less than their current monthly rents.
“So we’re seeing families being successful in paying back,” Binion said.
Negotiations need to take place before you come in here. … There’s too much negotiation going on at the table and that’s not proper.
District Judge Leah Williams Duncan
So far, the authority has been able to gain 22 favorable judgments in eviction cases, Ceoffe said.
Through federal rental assistance programs administered by ACTION Housing, the authority has received $3 million in rent owed by tenants, Binion and Ceoffe noted.
The city’s housing authority isn’t the only landlord filing a high number of evictions. Across the county 430 landlord-tenant filings — the highest weekly total since 2020 — were made in the span of one week in July, according to data collected by Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab.
A judge weary of continuances
Landlords can file to evict tenants if their lease is expired, if they’ve violated a lease term or if they haven’t paid rent.
District judges then have a handful of options.
They can enter a pay-and-stay judgment, in which the tenant can remain only if they pay up. If a tenant refuses to pay rent because of an issue with livability of the residence, judges may ask the tenant if they have put money in an escrow account, which shows that tenant is willing to pay rent but is withholding it for legitimate reasons.
The judge can also find in favor of the tenant, grant an order of possession allowing the landlord to remove the tenant, or opt for a continuance.
As the authority ramps up evictions in some communities, Wright’s delay-and-stay approach isn’t universally accepted.
On Aug. 20, District Judge Leah Williams Duncan held eviction hearings against housing authority tenants in her Perry North courtroom.
Like Wright’s court, Duncan’s hosts the Lawyer of the Day program.
Unlike Wright, Duncan said she was concerned about the heavy reliance on continuances.
“I’m concerned about these convenience continuances taking away docket space by pushing them all to other court days that are already full with other court matters,” Duncan said as court was in session.
Duncan noted that when the authority filed 30-plus evictions in her district earlier this summer, she had to set aside an extra day — Thursday, July 11 — just to hear them all.
“This is taking up space for cases that haven’t been heard yet,” she said. “Negotiations need to take place before you come in here. … There’s too much negotiation going on at the table and that’s not proper.”
Christian Riley, Neighborhood Legal Services’ lawyer of the day, said, “Hopefully we can avoid mass eviction filings.”
The HACP’s representative in Duncan’s court was Ashley Kirkland, the site manager for Allegheny Dwellings and Northview Heights.
HACP leadership “want us to file in increments of 10 going forward,” Kirkland responded.
That day, Duncan didn’t grant any orders of possession in favor of the authority, and instead agreed to continue eviction hearings to later dates. On other dates, Wright similarly delayed judgments but usually for longer stretches. The two judges eventually, at later dates, ruled in favor of the authority in several cases.
Over the course of several weeks, Wright repeatedly held space for tenants to explain their situations.
The authority’s concerns include one objective reality: Overdue rent.
Terry told Wright on Aug. 5 that Northview residents owed a total of about $800,000 in delinquent rent.
Wright was not moved to evict.
“Next month, things will be more clear,” he said. “Different judges do different things. My court is just different. Everything that happened today is by agreement.”
COVID-driven programs fading
The challenges and economic downturn associated with COVID led to the federal Emergency Rental Assistance Program, run locally by Allegheny County. ERAP funding was already waning by 2022 and now the pool of money is further limited.
“The programs available, that changed a lot this year,” McDonald said. Earlier this year, she said, there were four rental assistance programs available for tenants facing eviction.
“Two programs ran out of funding,” McDonald said. “So right now we just have two.”
County Department of Human Services’ Director Erin Dalton said, in a statement to PublicSource, that preventing evictions is one of the goals her department is focused on related to housing stability.
“We learned a great deal from the supports that were put in place during the pandemic, both here and elsewhere across the country,” she wrote, and a new eviction-prevention plan is coming, with implementation beginning next summer. “ERAP and other funding should carry the current strategies through that period.”
McDonald said that the Lawyer of the Day program depends on funding for its success to help avoid evictions.
“More often than not, tenants don’t need lawyers because it’s about getting funding,” she said.
The importance of funding over legal representation was on display in an eviction hearing on Sept. 18 in Wright’s court.
One tenant owed the housing authority more than $7,000 in rent, and Terry offered to put the tenant on a 36-month payment plan.
“How am I going to pay $600 a month in these payment plans?” the tenant asked. “I’m going to always be behind. $360 is all I get in a week.”
The tenant’s lawyer of the day, Nicholas Brady, told his client, “This isn’t a court matter anymore. We’re in court for an eviction and this is the offer on the table.”
With that, Wright approved Terry’s withdrawal of the eviction filing with the requirement that the tenant would stick to the payment plan.
Mediation plans not followed
Another COVID-inspired initiative is Just Mediation Pittsburgh, a program meant to resolve rent disputes before they reach the eviction level.
McDonald said that most of the housing authority cases being heard by Wright and the other judges involved people who had entered repayment agreements with the authority through Just Mediation.
“Housing Authority tenants who went through Just Mediation will tell me, ‘I thought this was solved,’ because the [HACP] doesn’t follow up on the repayment process,” McDonald said. “Housing Authority never enacted those payment plans.”
The authority, she added, has not been factoring in available rental assistance when it crafts repayment plans for delinquent tenants.
“We advocate for agreements that keep people in their homes,” Binion countered. “Once that agreement is signed, responsibility falls to the resident. Unfortunately we see instances where payment plans are defaulted.”
Binion said the authority enters into about 25 mediations per month with Just Mediation Pittsburgh and a dedicated staff member is responsible for mediations.
McDonald said tenants may not be well positioned to follow up with the authority after mediation.
“When you’re in poverty, you’re in threat of things getting worse – or at least it feels that way – so I understand why tenants don’t want to go to the rental office because they’re worried it could get worse and they’re not hearing from the [HACP] for a year.”
Eric Jankiewicz is PublicSource’s economic development reporter, and can be reached at ericj@publicsource.org or on Twitter @ericjankiewicz.
This story has been fact-checked by Sarah Liez.
This article first appeared on PublicSource and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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