In the Phoenix area, rapid evictions leave delinquent renters with almost no options

Tenants can find information for Defending Evictions on NationalEvictions.com

So much was at stake, but there was nowhere to sit. The courtroom’s wooden pews couldn’t hold them all. So the people called into Country Meadows Justice Court sat in the jury box and pressed themselves against the white walls. A group waited in the hallway outside. They clutched bright green eviction papers and practiced what they would tell the judge.

They were going to lose. They just didn’t know it yet.

Behind the bench, Judge Louis Goodman scanned his daily docket. It listed 128 eviction hearings. Then he flicked on a digital clock and motioned to the lawyers’ table, where attorney Kevin Holliday sat behind a tall stack of folders.

“Are you ready to go, sir?” Goodman asked.

“I can certainly start,” Holliday said. He stood and carried his folders to the bench. Loose papers shifted inside. Holliday had loaded them in advance, filling in the details of judgments he would almost surely win: Hundreds of dollars owed, five days to move out.

Goodman took the first file and read the name aloud. He looked up. Holliday twisted around. A crammed courtroom stared back, but nobody moved. Six seconds passed. Silence. Goodman called the name again. He waited 3 more seconds.

“Defendant is not present. Judgment will be entered,” he said, reaching for Holliday’s pre-filled form. He scanned it. Signed it. Handed to the clerk.

The day’s first tenant had been evicted. The hearing lasted 10 seconds.

Goodman called a couple’s names. They weren’t there. Their case took 13 seconds. The next lasted 7 seconds. Six. Six again. Eight seconds. Each one would empty another home.

“All right, we’ve got more,” Goodman said 20 minutes later, after he had blitzed through 29 cases. All but one ended in eviction. “Wow. Busy day.”

The eviction cycle had reached its peak. It was the third Wednesday in June, one of the busiest times of the year in a Justice Court system that often works more like an eviction mill.

Last year, Maricopa County’s Justice Courts issued 42,460 eviction judgments, one for every 14 rental households in this massive county that’s sinking ever-deeper into an affordable-housing crisis.

Once a person is sucked into the system, there’s almost no way to escape. A lawyer can help, but only a minuscule minority of tenants have one. The rest are overpowered by expert attorneys and overwhelmed in courtrooms where more time is spent on a single traffic ticket than a dozen life-altering evictions.

“There is nothing that goes on in the eviction system that is of any help to tenants,” said Ellen Sue Katz, executive director of the William E. Morris Institute for Justice, which advocates on behalf of low-income Arizonans.

Most cases are decided instantly, because the tenants don’t show up to defend themselves. Those who do are led by lawyers into courtroom hallways, where they’re nudged toward signing a settlement and agreeing to move out.

The few people who actually stand before a Justice of the Peace get just a few seconds to unwind why they missed rent. They make often-futile efforts to shake off an eviction, to push their case to trial, to buy a couple more days at home.

“I was switching jobs, so I was just pulling money out of my 401(k),” a young man with gelled hair told Goodman. He was evicted.

“This is my first time ever being here,” a woman in yoga pants explained. She was evicted.

“There’s no way you can do a suspension for a few hours?” another woman asked.

There wasn’t. She was evicted.