Category: housing

Eviction, Charlotte-style

Amid much local conversation recently about economic mobility in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, not much publicity has been paid to evictions, although sometimes it seems as if every civic leader you talk to has read, and is raving about, Matthew Desmond’s book, Evicted. (See the PlanCharlotte.org book review here. And yes, I’m among the chorus of fans of the book.)

But at today’s Housing Affordability Symposium, I just heard some eye-popping numbers from Ted Fillette, a long-time attorney with Legal Aid of North Carolina who has worked for decades on housing issues. Some of what Fillette said:

  • Every year more than 35,000 eviction cases are filed in Mecklenburg County.
  • Those cases are channeled through small claims court. Three courts run concurrently daily, five days a week and 50 weeks a year. Each magistrate (the judge for these cases) is assigned 30 to 120 cases per hour.

“What does it take to assume you only need 30 seconds or 60 seconds per case?” Fillette asked. “The presumption is people will not know their rights, can’t find the courthouse, or won’t have a defense.”

Speaking in the small auditorium where I’m sitting, Fillette describes the process: “What happens when 80 or 100 people show up, in a room about this size, and a magistrate calls 100 names per hour?”

If the tenant doesn’t hear his or her name the magistrate writes on a notepad to enter a judgment against the tenant. The tenants aren’t mailed the judgment. The first time many people learn a judgment has been entered against them is when they get a note from the sheriff, and the sheriff’s deputies show up. “They have five minutes to get the kids, pets, medicine, anything they can carry, then the house is locked up,” Fillette said. They have seven days to retrieve their belongings. If they have no place to move their things, the landlord can sell, destroy or throw away all their belongings.

“And there’s a record at the courthouse that stays there forever. … It’s as much of a permanent scar as a criminal conviction.” Being evicted makes it difficult to ever rent again.

Fillette said that of the 35,000 eviction cases a year, his office will represent about 400 — and win 95 percent of those cases. “It’s the ones we don’t see that matter.”

Of the people in eviction court, 95 percent are African-American women, or disabled or elderly, he said.

“What’s happening to African-American men in the criminal system is happening to African-American women in the court system.”

Yet another way the feds promote sprawl

Another new subdivision for Union County, N.C., just south of Charlotte. Photo: Nancy Pierce


Feds promoting sprawl? That might surprise people who believe (wrongly, let me state) that the government is trying to push everyone, kicking and screaming, into high-rise apartments. But this article from Governing magazine last month shows that, in fact, the feds incentivize single-family housing at the expense of more dense development. The result is that some multifamily and mixed-use developments are pricier than they should be to buyers.

“Since its 1934 inception,” writes Scott Beyer, “the FHA [Federal Housing Administration] has insured mortgages for more than 34 million properties, facilitating mass homeownership over several generations. But only 47,205 of these plans have been for multifamily projects. This is due to longtime provisions that make it harder for condos to get FHA certification. As late as 2012, 90 percent of a condo’s units had to be owner-occupied and only 25 percent of its space could be for businesses.”

The FHA has eased that rule a bit in the past two years, Beyer reports, but even so: “These policies mean that, although practically every single-family home can be FHA-insured, only 10 percent of condo projects nationwide qualify. This makes condos less affordable, since prospective buyers seeking private financing without FHA backing face higher borrowing costs and typically must make 20 percent down payments rather than the 3.5 percent typically required of FHA-backed mortgages.”

Click here to read his full report, “FHA Policies Discourage Density.”

Today’s reads: Urban housing, post-crisis Charlotte, and a pox on high-rises

 Steve Mouzon of Original Green fires back at what he calls Skyscraper Fetish: the idea that to increase density in cities – generally considered an environmentally desirable goal – requires high-rise residential towers (examples of some in uptown Charlotte in photo, above).

In “Uninhabitable high-rises,”  he points out some of the problems: wind speeds grow with height, making cross-ventilation difficult. Glass curtain walls either cause immense glare, or must be so strongly sun-screened that it’s tough for light to penetrate far inside. Operable windows are problematic in tall buildings. And this:”Elevator motors consume more energy than any other single piece of equipment in a high-rise building.” 

Subdivisions go urban as housing market changes. USA Today’s Haya El Nasser asks: “Why are the giants of the building industry, the creators for decades of massive communities of cookie-cutter homes, cul-de-sacs and McMansions in far-flung suburbs, doing an about-face? Why are they suddenly building smaller neighborhoods in and close to cities on land more likely to be near a train station than a pig farm?”

Her answer: The U.S. housing industry is rethinking what type of housing to build and where to build it.
I’ve wondered whether some of the news about this trend might be wishful thinking, but El Nasser has facts to buttress her point:

“Latest Census data show that population growth in fringe counties nearly stopped in the 12 months that ended July 1, 2011, and urban counties at the center of metro areas grew faster than the nation as a whole, a USA TODAY analysis found.
“Central metro counties accounted for 94% of U.S. growth, compared with 85% just before the recession and housing bust.
“A recent Case Western Reserve University study found that Cleveland’s inner city is growing faster than its suburbs for the first time.”
Fortune magazine takes a look at Charlotte after the banking crisis: “Charlotte after the bank crisis: ‘Just fine, and you?’ ” Contains this great line: “And there you have the essence of Charlotte. It is a city that knows how to move on.” 
And for long-time Charlotteans or newer residents who are history buffs, here’s a video of driving through Charlotte streets in 1986. There’s footage from Indy Boulevard but, alas, no Thompson’s Bootery and Bloomery. I lived here then, and I had a hard time identifying a lot of the scenes. There were a lot of highways and convenience stores. The car radio music is fun, too.
Meanwhile, back in the OQC (Other Queen City, aka Cincinnati): “Getting it right in the Queen City.”
Photo credit: Claire Apaliski of UNC Charlotte’s Urban Institute.