Chattanooga’s nonprofit and government leaders are preparing to cushion the blow of an onslaught of eviction cases that have been accumulating throughout the pandemic.
On Thursday, local courts heard the first 53 eviction cases in several months, a precursor for the wave of cases attorney Emily O’Donnell expects to see as protections for those facing eviction during the pandemic run out.
“We already know that the 53 on the docket today was like a practice, it’s going to get much, much worse,” O’Donnell said during a news conference after court on Thursday. “I overheard a judge say that he thought that, when we really go back big time, he anticipates some late nights to hear all the cases. So we know that this is going to increase, and we don’t know what the cost will be.”
O’Donnell, along with Legal Aid of East Tennessee, representatives of nonprofit Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise and other community leaders concerned with affordable housing have been preparing for the influx of evictions since the start of the pandemic.
“When the courts closed and the world shut down and it was clear that this was going to have a dire economic effect, almost immediately people just started talking about housing and evictions and the pile-up of eviction cases that would be flooding the court system,” O’Donnell said, noting that attorneys, judges, nonprofit leaders and “pretty much the whole legal community” began to brace for the housing impact of the pandemic last summer.