Evictions spike in Sonoma County

At the front step of a home flanked by withered rose bushes, Sonoma County Sheriff?s deputy Kori Mooney last week watched as a locksmith broke into a rental home.

?Sheriff?s Department. Evictions,? she called out as the door was shimmied open.

The house was empty. The tenants, whose late rent, bounced checks and subletting of a garage space led their landlord to file court papers for eviction, had left.

The landlord pocketed a new set of keys.

Mooney got back behind the wheel of her squad car. There was one more eviction that afternoon. She had already done a half dozen. In the 12 months that ended June 30 she served 956 notices.

The frustrated landlord, the locksmith breaking a lock open, the call out to a tenant who may or may not have moved out, is a situation becoming more and more familiar in neighborhoods across Northern California.

No state or national organization tracks annual eviction statistics, but housing experts said many counties across the United States are reporting sharp increases in the numbers of evictions.

Among them is Sonoma County, where court-ordered evictions are up 25 percent over three years. A total of 170 more evictions were ordered last year than the year before.

?The economy?s bad,? said Mooney, who is the Sonoma County Sheriff Department?s full-time evictions deputy. ?I hear ?he lost his job? or ?he got injured.? People are embarrassed,? she said.

Sonoma County?s unemployment rate hit 10.2 percent in June, reaching double digits for the first time since 1983, and the number of homes in default continues to increase.

?It doesn?t surprise me that in the last year you?ve seen a spike in evictions,? said Danilo Pelletiere, research director with the National Low Income Housing Coalition in Washington D.C.

?It?s what we?re hearing. I think that taking aside the foreclosure crises, we are in a recession. Folks? hours get cut and members of households become unemployed and those sorts of things lead to evictions,? Pelletiere said.

Local legal aid and housing counselors said rising foreclosures rates are driving up the numbers of evictions, though the evidence is mostly anecdotal. That?s because court records do not indicate the reason for an eviction.

What is known is that more households are waiting until the final notice to move out, said Ronit Rubinoff, executive director of Legal Aid of Sonoma County, an organization that assists tenants in rental disputes.

In previous years, many households found other living arrangements before receiving a final notice, housing experts in Sonoma County said.

That 956 households in Sonoma County in the past year delayed vacating long enough to trigger a knock on the door from a sheriff?s deputy shows the depth of the financial strain, Rubinoff said.

?People generally do not want to wait until the last second. That?s the most desperate place to be,? she said.

Housing and legal-aid organizations have seen a spike in calls for assistance that roughly corresponds with the increase in evictions, staff at those organizations said.

Renters, and home owners being evicted by their banks after a foreclosure, often need both legal and housing assistance.

?It?s really a struggle out there,? said Mari Reynoso, a housing counselor with Fair Housing of Sonoma County, a Community Action Partnership project. ?I have people every day crying on the other side of the phone, ?I had two jobs and I got laid off both.? There?s no option for them then.?

You can reach Staff Writer Laura Norton at 521-5220 or laura.norton@pressdemocrat.

com.