Standing in front of a judge in Hamilton County General Sessions Court, the single father of two teenage sons asked for more time.
“I would like to have a few days of leniency,” the man said. “I have been in contact with the [Tennessee Housing Development Agency]. I do qualify [for rental assistance]. I would really appreciate it if I could work with THDA. I don’t want to be evicted. I don’t want to be homeless.”
But he hadn’t paid the $933 rent at his apartment complex in three months, and his landlord wasn’t interested in waiting any longer, or in pursuing the federal funds that might have covered his back rent.
“You’re going to have to be out in 10 days unless you appeal the judgment,” Judge Christie Mahn Sell told him during the hearing Aug. 12. “Sometimes they just want to get someone out of the property. They want a paying tenant.”
Until last month, an eviction moratorium protected some tenants who lost income due to the pandemic, but it has been declared unconstitutional – first on July 23 by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, already making it unenforceable in Tennessee, and now by the U.S. Supreme Court.