Eviction's Permanent Tattoo: Healing Greenville's Hidden Crisis

In Greenville County, an eviction filing follows you for life like a permanent tattoo - even if you win your case. With 20% of local renters facing eviction (compared to just 8% nationally), this crisis isn't just creating homelessness; it's costing landlords up to $5,000 per case and driving up housing costs for everyone. Experts Tina Belge and Mario Brown reveal why property owners and tenant advocates have surprisingly united around four key reforms that could transform evictions from "a cause of poverty" into an opportunity for community prosperity. The solutions are ready - but is Greenville?

Links:

Project Website

Tina Belge bio

Mario Brown bio

Transcript

[00:01] Katy Smith: Evictions create a terrible hardship on both tenants and landlords. And a recent local study showed that Greenville County, South Carolina has some of the highest eviction rates in the country. Listen to this staggering statistic. 20% of renters in Greenville County had an eviction filed against them from March 2020 through August 2024, compared to just 8% of renters nationwide.

[00:27] Katy Smith: Evictions impact educational outcomes as students may have to change schools mid-year. They impact health with stress and likely worse living conditions. They create homelessness. They cost landlords who then have to turn over the property. As national evictions expert Matthew Desmond says, evictions are a cause, not a condition of poverty. In other words, evictions cost all of us.

[00:51] Katy Smith: So what can we do about it? I'm Katy Smith with Greater Good Greenville, and on this episode of Simple Civics, Greenville County, we'll talk to two folks who can fill us in on the eviction process, what's unique about it in our state, and actionable steps our state and community can take.

[01:06] Katy Smith: I'm joined by Tina Belge with Catalyst Community Consulting, author of the study, and Mario Brown, co-founder and principal of Affordable Upstate. Both of their very impressive bios are in the show notes, as are links to previous episodes we've done on the topic of evictions.

[01:24] Katy Smith: I'm delighted to have Tina Belge and Mario Brown here to talk about the really important topic of evictions in Greenville County. Thanks so much for being here.

[01:32] Tina Belge: Thanks for having us.

[01:33] Mario Brown: Yeah, thank you.

[01:34] Katy Smith: I shared in the opening Greenville County's shocking and really shameful eviction rate. And I wonder Tina, if you could give us a bit more perspective on the data around eviction rates here.

[01:45] Tina Belge: So for Greenville County, it is one of the highest rates that we have across the country. The United States has an 8% eviction filing rate, if that gives you any perspective. But it's important that we talk about it's not the eviction rate, it's the eviction filing rate. So I do want to make sure that we clarify that.

[02:04] Tina Belge: But as an example, we have around a 22% eviction filing rate. One in five renters in Greenville faced some kind of eviction. And about 1,200 is the average number of filings per month in Greenville County. So it is pretty high. It is not as high, I should say as Richland County, which is in South Carolina, but we're pretty high across the state in terms of numbers of eviction filings.

[02:30] Tina Belge: So, it's a pretty significant problem and like I said, almost three times as much as the national average.

[02:36] Katy Smith: Gosh, that is, I mean, it just feels like a tragedy and thus I am so glad that you all are doing this work. So, in case folks aren't familiar with how evictions work, Mario, can you give us a quick overview of the process?

[02:49] Mario Brown: Absolutely. And I'll contextualize it a little bit. So we own 1500 apartments here in Greenville and Spartanburg, 1970s, 1980s, Garden style apartments that we redevelop and layer affordable housing incentives into. So we are, textbook naturally occurring affordable housing owners.

[03:07] Mario Brown: So we have a front row seat to really watch evictions, not only the volume, but the process itself. And the process that you ask about Katy is it's all over the place. But that to say, it starts with a tenant that doesn't pay rent. And, from there, filing that eviction and going through the steps per magistrate or per area. In some areas it's efficient, in some areas it's not.

[03:33] Mario Brown: But once we file the eviction, there's then kind of a legal process that gives the tenant a set amount of days to respond. And then from there, there's an actual writ filed and an ejection that actually happens at the end of that process.

[03:47] Mario Brown: So, the problem Katy is that it's a little different per area. And as a landlord and an owner, there are dramatic costs when we start adding variability to an already messy situation. A lot of landlords use evictions as a collections tool, right? So as Tina highlighted, we're talking about the filing rate. So, not the actual ejection rate. 50% of the folks that are filed on actually resolve that eviction and pay their rent and actually adhere to the threat the landlord made via the eviction. But unfortunately, that mark still stays on their record and I think that is the big highlight and that's the big message that resident is kind of permanently encumbered in terms of renting other properties.

[04:29] Mario Brown: So there's a lot of discretion with the magistrate themselves. So they can be pro-eviction or, or hate evictions. So it's just variable. So as we look at our portfolio and we have managers who are attempting to execute an eviction because there's a non-payment. We don't know what we're going to get on the other side. Therefore it's a more expensive process for an owner. Moreover, we're not able to actually give the resident any help or guidance through it. So as to, really prevent what none of us want is the actual ejection.

[05:08] Mario Brown: Based on magistrate, based on their personality, sometimes what they have for breakfast, we sometimes get different outcomes.

[05:14] Katy Smith: Okay, I let me just say, I feel like I know more about this than the average person and I had no idea of what you were talking about until you said it just now and it's kind of like I'm smacking myself in the forehead. So this I don't even know. Are are magistrates county or city officials?

[05:29] Tina Belge: Or state appointed? There are county and city court judges, but magistrates in the terms of eviction filings are county.

[05:38] Katy Smith: So every county has one or more magistrates?

[05:41] Tina Belge: Many magistrates.

[05:43] Katy Smith: So Mario, let's say you've got a property in Greenville County, you're evicting somebody. Is it going to be kind of assigned to one of many magistrates?

[05:51] Mario Brown: Correct.

[05:52] Katy Smith: Holy cow. Oh my gosh.

[05:55] Tina Belge: And then if you're a property owner who owns property across the state, it's going to be very different within each county how they operate as well.

[06:04] Katy Smith: Gosh, I had not thought about this. So, so each county has multiple magistrates and if you are filing an eviction in Anderson County versus Greenville County versus Spartanburg County, it will then get assigned to one of many there. So it is a bit of a roll of the dice who you and who that tenant gets deciding their case and what attitude they're going to bring towards it.

[06:26] Mario Brown: That's exactly right. The variability that you're speaking to, it only adds to the impact. So when we look at unit turnover and, the really the financial impact of an eviction. And we've done a lot of things to prevent evictions which we'll talk about later in terms of reporting positive payments to the credit bureau, flexible payment terms.

[06:48] Mario Brown: But sometimes it happens because we have to collect rent to be sustainable to do the good work that our firm does. The cost is downtime. We don't know if it's going to be a month, two months, three months of lost rent in terms of there's attorney cost, the more complicated it is, the more legal help we need to do things. And lastly, I think the weight on the resident themselves. Sometimes it's better to know what something is. Hey, we know we have to file our taxes and go through XYZ. If we had to wait to go talk to someone and maybe it works today, maybe it doesn't. Yeah, all the maybes just exacerbate the issue.

[07:27] Tina Belge: I think another good point of context is that non-payment is the number one reason for evictions. However, there are breach of lease agreement, if someone has a hold over and they're not seeking to renew another term and then they're removed because they've not signed a new lease. Those are the three legal reasons you can file an eviction in South Carolina.

[07:50] Tina Belge: That being said, non-payment is the most common and we're having a lot of income keeping up with rents issue and all the like, which we'll get into in a minute. But sometimes what we find is there is a certain percentage of evictions that are just always going to be carried out. Like Mario's saying, there's always going to be amount that are going to lead to that writ of ejectment because the non-payment is just so high.

[08:12] Tina Belge: But there is a certain percent, it's in that 1,000 to 2,000 range that we can try to prevent people that maybe temporary loss of job or hours or it could be access to a car that's preventing or a sick family member or sick, themselves. So there's kind of some situational things that's going it's a small percent, but it's a percent that we can prevent from slipping into the worst ramifications of eviction, which obviously lead to a lot of issues for our community, but homelessness being the most prominent.

[08:44] Mario Brown: Right, there's some low there's some low hanging fruit there. And I would also like to piggy back off that Tina I'd say, yeah, this is not a problem that we solve, it's a problem that we impact. We got to have enough courage to actually impact it to get that 1,000 or 2,000 neighbors that we could rally around as a community with resources and a streamlined process so as to improve improve the outcome for them.

[09:09] Katy Smith: Will you say a little bit more one of you guys about the impact of an eviction? In case someone is brand new to this topic that once you have an eviction filed, it stays on your record and the impacts that that has.

[09:21] Tina Belge: There's a great story actually in the research paper which highlights a woman here in Greenville County going through that same experience and it was really a breach of violation of lease issue and that there were some repairs not being done by her landlord and she pushed for that, it was not received and then, there was non payment and went back and forth.

[09:45] Tina Belge: Eventually she, she sought help through SC Legal Services. She won her case, but it still stayed on her record. And to this day, she has issues renting within Greenville County, even having won that case. So about 50% of cases are going to result in a resolution and a win by that tenant, but it will unfortunately stay with them.

[10:09] Tina Belge: This is how we have a huge rise and folks living in hotel motels because where else will you rent? And unfortunately, some landlords that do a great job and they're looking at the full eviction filing right and they're looking past several years and saying, well, no, it was eviction so long ago or whatnot. Our system also isn't easy to read. It's not, you got to dig through and find that information. If you're just like, you have 100 applicants and you know, you're not going to dig through and see that that was actually an eviction filing that she won.

[10:39] Tina Belge: So there are some long repercussions. I know for her individually, it disrupted her kids and their own educational attainment. They were removed and had to go to different school because of the rezoning based on the move that they had. And there's a lot of statistics tied to stunted educational and then workforce attainment because of evictions.

[11:02] Mario Brown: Well, that's where I think my perspective comes from is, this is really, it's a social problem, but it's also an economic problem that, for those of us in tune with the vibrancy of Greenville, the small business community, if we care about our service workers and our baristas, we care about our children's teachers, the folks that actually need to access attainable housing, we should care about this issue because this impacts them. The issues, the cost that they incur within housing, 100% is reflected in the cost of the cup of coffee that I buy every morning.

[11:35] Mario Brown: Right? So I need to understand that as a community member. I need to understand that that's why, that's why this matters. Though well-founded on the social side in terms of the problem, this is an economic proposition, right? For the sustainability of our community, we need to have courage to face it, right? And deal with it though it's a little nasty.

[11:53] Katy Smith: Well said, for sure. Well, you touched on this, Mario. I mean, landlords do need to get paid. You have your own mortgage that you need to pay and operations for the rest of the tenants. So for sure, but the process as it stands is not great for landlords either. Can you talk a little bit more about the impacts of this flawed process for landlords and costs that you incur?

[12:14] Mario Brown: It's almost unquantifiable. We actually spent the time and energy to really dig through evictions as a part of this white paper Tina and her firm produced to understand exactly what does it cost? And where and where where's the leakage? And for us, it's about 18%. 18%. So $3 to $5,000 that it cost us to go through the whole process.

[12:40] Mario Brown: And so one thing is like, hey, we don't want to do that. One, we don't want to go through the process. One it's expensive. We lose every time we do it. Not to mention that we don't want to disrupt households. That cost that we incur, we have to pass on to the next resident. So rent that would have been $1,000 is now $1050, $1,100, right? So it impacts the affordability of the property overall, but then there's a direct cost to the bottom line month to month.

[13:07] Katy Smith: That is astonishing and puts such a fine point on why this matters to everybody. So thank you for that math and helping helping clarify the importance of making changes.

[13:17] Katy Smith: Well, the good news here is that there are solutions and ones that we can enact fairly quickly with the right political will. What were the top ones that emerged in your research that we should be thinking about right now?

[13:29] Tina Belge: Sure. So there are three different sections of the solutions. They really focus on preventing evictions, reform of the current system of evictions, and then how do we lessen the impact after somebody receives an eviction?

[13:43] Tina Belge: So, just the big four, I think to highlight the most important are what we just talked about, improving that expungement process. If somebody has an eviction on their record, making sure that it doesn't impact them for the rest of their life because that's how it is now, right? If you think about like a credit score, like that's seven years. But an eviction is for a lifetime. It's like a tattoo.

[14:03] Tina Belge: So we've been able to talk with different parties and reach a place of implementation that would favor both landlords and tenants. And that's what folks really want to see is being able to remove it from the public index, especially if you won that case as a tenant. And then after an appropriate amount of time having that eviction be expunged and going through the court system because right now there is not a process for that.

[14:28] Tina Belge: Second would be housing court. This is something that we talked about a little bit, but that would just give counsel essentially to those who are facing an eviction. Right now, usually, I think it's 80% of landlords are coming in with some kind of counsel representation, but tenants don't necessarily have that. And so just making sure that there's an even playing field and that there's facilitation of a mutually benefiting agreement. I would say that's the key here, right? Where can we get a resolution on payment? Where can we get a resolution on, hey, I'm not going to make payment. What's an appropriate time to move out? What are all the processes so that everybody can mutually benefit?

[15:08] Katy Smith: I can see how important right to counsel would be because if you have a criminal charge, you get counsel to help you navigate through whatever that is and get due process. And even though this is a civil proceeding, it has the impact on your life as if you have been charged with a serious crime. And that that doesn't exist right now when as you say, landlords are coming in with counsel, that seems like an obvious need for South Carolinians.

[15:32] Mario Brown: We have a centralized housing court with streamlined consistent processes. It's easier to mobilize the nonprofit community to this one housing court because they understand the steps. It's more affordable to a resident who wants to engage legal counsel because it isn't as complicated. It's foundational to a proactive position for the community.

[15:57] Tina Belge: So the third one would be the eviction prevention program, which is kind of to Mario's point, right? It is about the wrap around services, these other case managers and organizations who right now we can operate so often in a silo. And so really putting everybody together on the same page with legal services, with housing court, with the folks, the tenants and the landlords. And so everyone's talking together and trying to get that bucket filled, right? Whatever that resource may be to that person. And that can be on the front end of repayment and arrears and rental arrears, all the way to, hey, we are going to go through with ejectment and what are the supports that person's going to need after the fact, right?

[16:39] Tina Belge: So those are an important part of the process. There are really some good case studies from cities across the country. Philadelphia is a really interesting one that wraps both the housing court and an eviction prevention program together.

[16:53] Tina Belge: The last one would be the landlord and tenant education. So very much what Mario's already said, like he was part of this paper and crafting it and having conversations and he internally looked at their properties and their process and systems and said, hey, what can I do better around evictions? And so we as a community need to do better educating both landlords and tenants on what the rights are, what the processes are. What are some cool tools like what Affordable Upstate, NOAH are doing around eviction services and making sure that they're reducing their numbers and that people are thriving in this opportunity instead of making it like it's a bad thing that we just like have to get away from and separate. It's diving into those conversations and saying, hey, how can we solve this together? Because it's costly for everybody.

[17:44] Katy Smith: That is what I think I love the most about this project is I mean for years I have heard that evictions are a problem in South Carolina. And this is not bandaids you're talking about. You are getting in the machinery of it and fixing it so that we can all thrive in the state. And so thanks for not shying away from it.

[18:02] Tina Belge: It's really important. I think people don't realize that we face a lot of affordable housing issues, we face eviction problems, we face homelessness. They're all so interrelated. If we're talking about preventing homelessness, that means preventing evictions from happening. These are all kind of and it's an upstream, right? of the eventual impact. And so this is just one way that we can address some of the issues that we're having in our community.

[18:26] Mario Brown: Yeah, and I would add the education, that projects like this have for for our group. I mean, we want to do better. If we know better, we're going to do better. And to that point, at all of our properties, we offer flexible payment terms, we call it Flex Pay, where a resident can programmatically upfront say, hey, I want to pay my rent twice a month or every week.

[18:47] Mario Brown: And what we saw this last year was that those that engaged or signed up for Flex Pay had a 33% lower eviction rate than those that did not. It's allowed us to kind of have a different lens, the white paper and the kind of the entire process of, hey, how do we quantify our our programs from the social side, not just the financial side. Yeah, it feels really good to know that we're not crazy. Maybe bonded in misery at times with the housing community at large because we feel like it's nuts the way it's done.

[19:24] Katy Smith: That bonding that you have with the rest of the housing community is what is so impressive in this project. To see how many of your peers who are housing providers or nonprofit organizations or tenant advocates that were a part of the project. Well, you have some great recommendations ready. You've got excellent research to back it. What are you hearing now that you've put it out there? What does the appetite and response seem to be?

[19:45] Tina Belge: Yeah, so off the bat, there's been a lot of landlord and tenant education already happening on just some different events and conversations already ongoing as one of the outputs of the paper. But also just talking with, the Upstate Apartment Association, the State Apartment Association and others, landlords, the realtor group out of South Carolina has led to a lot of discussions around the eviction process, particularly around expungement. It's something that everybody seems pretty excited about and a lot of commonality, a lot of just common ground and move forward on that issue because it would benefit everybody. So I think you'll see some movement in that at the state level.

[20:26] Katy Smith: Well, how can people learn more about the research and the recommendations?

[20:31] Tina Belge: Yeah, so you can learn more and find some of the resources at evictioningvlcounty.org. That's eviction in GVL County dot org. And there's a full paper there. There's kind of some videos to walk you through different insights both from landlord, tenant, agencies who help folks going through evictions. All the different perspectives you might see around the eviction process. And legal as well and what they are going through in the process.

[21:04] Tina Belge: It has a list of all of the organizations who are part of this. It's government, nonprofit, private sector, landlords, both nonprofit and private. Those who have gone directly through evictions themselves, so tenants who've experienced this and all the wrap around services and people who are part of this eviction process in somewhere or another were part of the conversation. So it was a wonderful opportunity to really talk about this as a solutions approach as a community and there's plenty of resources you can take advantage of both as a landlord and a tenant on the website.

[21:39] Katy Smith: Outstanding. We'll put a link to that on the episode page in case you're driving or want an easy click that way, people can easily find it. I'm just so grateful to you, not just for joining us here today and educating listeners about the dire improvements we need to make in the evictions process, but what steps can be taken right now. So thanks so much for being here and thanks for all your advocacy and hard work.

[22:02] Mario Brown: Thank you for having us. I think really elevated this conversation in the community at large. It's a really delicate and necessary part of the work of community work, shining light in darkness.

[22:14] Tina Belge: Yeah, thank you Katy for your time. I also just want to say to the listeners, you know, we look forward to connecting with you as you see more of this information come out and just getting this education out to the community. And as you see policies, coming either forward on the state or local level, we'll hope you'll join in supporting what is a movement to help reduce the real impacts of this major problem of evictions in our community.

[22:41] Katy Smith: Well, I just strongly urge everyone to go to the website, learn more and sign up to stay in touch with what's happening in the movement.