Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart who gained fame a few years ago by refusing to enforce evictions is foreclosure cases has been slammed by a Cook County Judge and ordered to pay a landlord $1400 for taking until February 16, 2010 to enforce an eviction order entered on August 24, 2009. That's about a six month wait. The Sheriff's office argues that manpower shortages, eviction backlogs, and a problem with the eviction order caused the delay.
Landlords are often surprised that it takes so long for the Sheriff to enforce an eviction. In my experience, the winter is always worse for evictions. Because of the holiday eviction moratorium and the delays caused by inclement weather, evictions in the winter used to back up quite a bit. These days, despite changes in the procedures at the Sheriff's office that allow for less time spent by the officers enforcing evictions, evictions take six to eight weeks in the good times and ten or eleven weeks during the winter.
Worse yet, the Sheriff's office has procedures in place to assist the elderly, disabled, and people with children with their move out. This sounds good in theory, but in practice, it adds a great deal of time to the process. There are bad apples out there among the ranks of both Landlords and Tenants, however, a Landlord with a mortgage can't afford to wait as long as it currently takes to get their tenants out.
2 comments:
A month ago, May 23, 2010 I got a $9000 judgment against a deadbeat tenant, Cindy McKay... 4 months late on rent. Now its another month. She's still there with her family. It's been 3 weeks since enforcement was ordered. Now I learn it might be another 6 weeks. It's my own house, I want to move back in and the tenant doesn't refuse my entry. She just won't leave. Can I move in? Everyone seems scared and the cops just say watch out...but they don't say no...they say it's "unwise". Like leaving it to the Sheriff is wise? Waiting...forever...may be till the next tax bill comes is wise? So once in can I just take posession and deny her entry by changing the locks at a convenient time. Come on...it's my own house, I pay the mortgage and the tax but I can't kick her out physically and the sheriff won't come to help and I'm scared the order will go stale by the time the sheriff gets around to me. This Sheriff Dart is a menace. This is a job for the cops, not the Sheriff. No taxation without enforcement! I want my house back. I want to live there. What can I do? Pedis Posessio? Help help...my attorneys seem like liberals and don't offer much help...I need a collector not an attorney.
Obviously, I can't give specific legal advice for your situation. I can speak generally about evictions though.
There are ONLY two ways to get possession of a rental property from the tenant:
1) the occupant voluntarily turns over possession and vacates; or
2) the County Sheriff evicts the occupant
Other than that, a landlord is not entitled to self help.
The local police do not have any right to evict a tenant, only the County Sheriff. Landlords must follow those procedures, no matter how difficult, time consuming, or frustrating.
A landlord who retakes possession via self help (ie. changing locks) can be found liable for a wrongful eviction and a tenant would have a cause of action against the landlord.
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