Charlotte congresswoman pleads for longer eviction freeze. Sheriff says he can’t.

As the nationwide eviction moratorium is set to end this week, Mecklenburg Sheriff Garry McFadden says his office has no authority to stop eviction removals once a court orders them, despite a request from U.S. Rep. Alma Adams.

Adams this week wrote to McFadden and officials with the local District and Superior court branches, urging them “to do everything within your powers to effectively extend the eviction moratorium in Mecklenburg County” for at least a month.

“In my discussions with the organizations and local leaders on the front lines of this crisis, it is clear we are unprepared for a deluge of tenants seeking assistance in August, and local service providers will have to resort to triage,” Adams wrote. She cited a Durham judge who extended eviction protections for tenants who have applied for rental assistance.

But, McFadden said, after consulting with the North Carolina Sheriffs’ Association, he found “no legal authority” to not execute removals once a court order is received.

Before courts closed and state and federal eviction moratoriums went into effect last year, McFadden had similarly said he could not unilaterally ignore eviction orders from the court.

“We had a crisis of homelessness in Mecklenburg County prior to the pandemic and I certainly do not want to add to that problem,” McFadden wrote Adams on Thursday.

The Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office has carried out 1,390 evictions this year through July 20, McFadden said.

Questions from the Charlotte Observer to local court officials about the legal authority to halt evictions on a county level without a state or federal order were not immediately answered.

Eviction moratorium ends July 31

The discussion comes as the federal moratorium on evictions is set to expire July 31. The order from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention covers renters who are behind on rent because of a pandemic-related hardship and who sign an affidavit saying so.

While the order doesn’t prevent all evictions, housing advocates around the country have urged federal officials to extend the moratorium past July, in part to give rental relief programs to administer aid in time before renters get a court summons. A similar state order from Gov. Roy Cooper expired at the end of June.

An estimated 250,000 North Carolinians are behind on their rent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Bracing for a flood of eviction court cases, local nonprofits are ramping up staffing for rent and utility assistance programs.

Applications for those with a pandemic-related income loss or illness reopen Aug. 1 at rampclt.com.

Additional financial assistance is available through Crisis Assistance Ministry. More information is available at crisisassistance.org.

This story was originally published July 23, 2021 at 9:50 AM.

Lauren Lindstrom

The Charlotte Observer

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Lauren Lindstrom is a reporter for the Charlotte Observer covering affordable housing. She previously covered health for The Blade in Toledo, Ohio, where she wrote about the state’s opioid crisis and childhood lead poisoning. Lauren is a Wisconsin native, a Northwestern University graduate and a 2019 Report for America corps member. Support my work with a digital subscription