SW Houston News

Until four weeks ago, Wednesdays in Harris County court were emotional days. While other days of the week revolved around Judge Jeremy L. Brown dealing with those with traffic infractions or granting marriage licenses, on Wednesdays, he was in a completely different and intense environment of listening to people beg to keep their place of residence. Wednesday was eviction court.

Across most of the nation, and in Harris County -- evictions and foreclosures have been suspended in response to the economic shutdown accompanying the COVID-19 pandemic. However, prior to that, the data showed the uptick in evictions in Harris County.

In 2019 alone, 62,548 people had to appear in Harris County’s eviction court. Within four out of 16 of the Harris County ZIP codes, over 1,000 evictions have been executed Brown’s court alone, per data provided by The Observer. Eviction cases increased from 55,000 in 2015 to 76,000 in 2016 and continued to increase in the following years.

“When you start looking at the numbers and what’s going on around the country with respect to evictions and homelessness, it screamed out that we look at policy changes,” Texas Southern University Law Professor Marcia Johnson said.

Brown grew up in Harris County and has been bringing stakeholders together in his precinct (Precinct 7) to devise ways to address this situation without evictions and get tenants and mortgagors back in good standing.

The purpose behind getting a reduction in court-ordered evictions is a simple one. When evictions are court ordered, it can have the same impact on an individual’s life when it comes to finding a place to live. Landlords will often not rent to those that have court-ordered evictions on their record. That can lead to homelessness.

It ultimately comes down to a policy issue. Brown is aware of this as well and informs everyone who comes into his court that Texas eviction laws do not provide him much autonomy when it comes to him deciding on an eviction case. In Texas, it does not matter, for example, if the location has repairs that need to be made or if the tenant has a previously good payment history and just stumbled upon hard times.

If the tenant does not pay according to the terms in the agreement despite any other circumstances or situations, the judge has to side with the landlord, whether they agree with them or not.