Describing the cycle of evictions in Marion County’s small claims courts, Rabbi Aaron Spiegel compared the process to doing laundry: wash, rinse, repeat.
Spiegel, executive director of the Greater Indianapolis Multifaith Alliance, said Marion County families and individuals who get served an eviction notice, typically for falling behind in rent payments and sometimes for complaining about habitability issues, will lose their home if they do not settle their overdue account. Once the tenants are removed, the landlord will rent to another family or individual who may soon struggle to keep up with the monthly rent payments and the eviction cycle starts again.
A majority of the eviction cases in Marion County are handled in one of the nine small claims courts. However, pointing to a 2023 investigation by The Indianapolis Star, Spiegel noted the eviction process varies widely between thosd courts with some judges giving tenants a couple of weeks to either collect the back rent or find a new place to live, and other judges ordering the residents to vacate in three days.
“They are the final stopgap between people staying in their homes or being on the road to homelessness,” Spiegel said of small claims court judges. “So, it’s time to hold these folks accountable for things like these huge (eviction) dockets (run) for half a day, where the only way they’re going to get through it is to spend two minutes on each case.”…