TOPEKA — A new judicial committee report on evictions in Kansas points to multiple problems with a complex, fast-paced legal system for ousting tenants who fail to pay their rent.
Three-fourths of eviction filings are resolved through procedural errors, an indicator of the ignorance tenants and landlords have with the legal process, the report found. Under the strain of the pandemic, courts failed to mitigate widespread confusion and misunderstanding about the availability of $300 million in federal aid administered by the state, half of which went unused.
The report recommended judges tell tenants early in the process that they can fight their eviction and that rental aid may be available to them. Other recommendations include targeting high schoolers with programs designed to educate them about the landlord-tenant relationship before they sign their first lease.
The committee also applied for a grant to install a program in Sedgwick County, which accounts for one-third of the state’s eviction filings, where an evictions facilitator could try to resolve disputes outside of the legal system.
The Kansas Supreme Court established the committee to examine best practices in anticipation of a spike in evictions after state and federal moratoriums expired in October 2021. Judge Sarah Warner, of the Kansas Court of Appeals, led the committee, which included judges, trial clerks, attorneys who routinely represent tenants and property owners, and representatives of landlords in Wichita and Hays. The 29-page report, dated April 20, was released on Wednesday.
The committee examined the evictions process and court filings going back to the 12-month fiscal year that ended in June 2017. The panel found that tenants didn’t respond to half the filings, resulting in an automatic judgment for the landlords. A quarter of the cases were dismissed because property owners had not provided a three-day notice required under state law for a tenant to come up with overdue rent.
Courts reported about 14,500 eviction filings per year in the three years before the pandemic, but no more than 150 cases went to trial in any of those years.
“The committee questions the wisdom and equity of this judicial model, which relies, at least in part, on litigants’ ignorance to stay afloat,” the report said.
Vince Munoz, of Rent Zero Kansas, a coalition that advocates for tenants, questioned the findings and recommendations of the committee because its members didn’t include a tenant, or anybody who has been evicted.
“It’s really hard to understate how significant of an oversight that is,” Munoz said. “For people who experience an eviction, when the court case is done, that’s when the impact starts on their life. For all the attorneys involved, it’s all over when the judge bangs the gavel or releases the opinion.”
He also said the report misses a broader point about the number of informal evictions that happen in Kansas by landlords who disconnect utilities or otherwise harass tenants into leaving. Many landlords declined to renew leases as they expired during the pandemic, or refused to accept federal aid — loopholes in state and federal orders banning evictions, Munoz said. Those factors could help explain why most of Kansas didn’t see a spike in eviction filings after the moratoriums expired.
The data presented in the committee’s report also shows that Kansas courts continued to handle thousands of eviction cases while the moratoriums were in place.
“The courts don’t really serve tenants’ interests,” Munoz said. “They serve those who are already powerful in the situation, and they just kind of sanitize and formalize landlord power over tenants.”
The judicial committee report, however, is critical of how some courts handle evictions and sympathetic to the challenges presented to tenants throughout a legal process that is designed to last no more than six weeks.
After a landlord provides a three-day notice for overdue rent, and the three days lapse without payment, the landlord can file an eviction petition in district court. The tenant has 14 days to respond. If the tenant disputes the allegation, a trial is set within 14 days. If the property owner prevails at trial, the court will order the tenant to be removed within 14 days.
