Orange County saw more evictions filed in August, after DeSantis quietly changed the moratorium

Since Gov. Ron DeSantis quietly changed the wording of Florida’s eviction moratorium, landlords in Orange County have filed hundreds of cases to remove tenants, outpacing the entirety of filings that streamed into the court from April to July when a stricter ban on evictions was in place.

The amended moratorium went into effect Aug. 1 and since then, Circuit Judge Eric Dubois said, 471 evictions have been filed in Orange. From April to July, there were 372.

Landlords in Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties filed 2,170 evictions cases between Aug. 1 and Aug. 27, also far more than in any of the four prior months.

The increases came after DeSantis narrowed the state’s moratorium to suspend only the “final action at the conclusion of an eviction proceeding” and solely for tenants who have been “adversely affected by the COVID-19 emergency.” The order, first imposed April 2, had previously been written to halt “any statute providing for an eviction cause of action,” although some landlords tried to toss out tenants anyways.