Grant boosts Akron Municipal Court effort to reduce Ohio's highest eviction rate
The Akron Municipal Court has received a $240,000 grant from the National Center for State Courts to help the city lower the highest eviction rate in the state.
The grant from the NCSC's Eviction Diversion Initiative will help the court start a housing program and hire two full-time staffers to assist people facing removal from their residences. The court plans to hire a housing program specialist and a court navigator/bailiff.
"As we continue to see a marked increase in evictions following the pandemic, it it becomes even more critically important that courts find ways to proactively connect landlords and tenants with the information and resources necessary to resolve their housing problems in the least harmful way," said Laurie Given, NCSC vice president for court consulting services.
Ten courts nationwide received part of $2 million set aside for the initiative out of a $10 million Wells Fargo Foundation grant awarded to the NCSC in 2021.
Akron was the only court in Ohio selected to receive this grant.
Akron Municipal Court Judges Ron Cable and Nicole Walker will lead the project, hoping to reach solutions between tenants who are having issues paying on time and their landlords. If no solutions are found, Cable said tenants will have access to community resources to find new housing before the court documents an eviction that could show up in a tenant's background check.
"We've made some efforts in the past to confront this issue, and fortunately we were able to get this grant to establish this housing program and continue to fight the high rates of evictions," Cable said, "We're ecstatic about receiving these funds for a program that we've been working on for years, but couldn't implement due to a lack of funding."
He said the grant could lead to a breakthrough that the city has sought in addressing a vexing problem.
"I don't know if anyone has figured out why we have the highest eviction rate per capita in the state, but we believe this grant will help us solve people's problems before they and their landlords have to go through the eviction court process, and this program will slow that high rate down," Cable said. "We're hoping to resolve some of the tenant/landlord issues that is contributing to these high rates."
He said the program is designed to help landlords and their tenants "complete the contracts that they entered with each other, or they can separate in a peaceful way," Cable said. "For those tenants that have to separate, the housing specialist can work with our community partners to find a tenant housing in the same area they live in."
He said sparing families from the stress of eviction is a key goal.
"One problem with evictions is that children's lives are needlessly uprooted by this process — those kids who settle in an area and make friends at their nearby school and then they have to move across town and do it all over again; it's just not fair to them," Cable said. "The housing specialist that the grant allows us to hire is there to find housing and resources for these parents so that their kids may have to move to a new house in the neighborhood, but at least they can go to the same school."
The NCSC grant will fund the housing program for three years, after which the court will decide whether to continue the program and apply for funding elsewhere.
"If this program is showing positive signs that it is helping to curb the rising eviction rates in this city then after funding runs out in three years, we will try to keep the program going," Cable said. "I certainly don't want to continue a program if it isn't working, but I have high hopes for this eviction diversion program and the grant we were awarded will be put to good use and will help our city."
Reporter Anthony Thompson can be reached at ajthompson@gannett.com, or on Twitter @athompsonABJ
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Akron Municipal Court receives $240,000 grant to reduce evictions
