How To Get An Eviction Removed From Your Record

Rachael Trombley, 27, faced an eviction during the pandemic despite having filed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's federal moratorium declaration. An attorney at Gulfcoast Legal Services helped her get her eviction records sealed from public online access.

Remembering the day in March when a sheriff's deputy showed up at her home in St. Petersburg is emotional for 27-year-old Rachael Trombley. She fights back tears when she talks about it.

Trombley, who is awaiting a kidney transplant, and her partner fell behind on rent during the pandemic once her partner lost his full-time job, their main source of income. There wasn't enough money for them to continue paying rent, child care costs, car insurance and Trombley's medical fees. By March, when the deputy showed up at their door, they were $7,000 behind in their rent.

Trombley became the defendant in an eviction lawsuit. A hearing date was set, but Trombley said she didn't know of the hearing until it was too late. She lost the legal battle and was evicted, a detrimental mark on her record that can have long-term effects.

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Attorney William Peña Wells at Gulfcoast Legal Services was able to seal Trombley's eviction record, so she stands a better chance of securing a rental property in the future.

"Once it's out of the online searchable database, it wouldn't be harvestable by any of the screening firms," Peña Wells said.

Tenants with evictions
'frequently blacklisted'

The Florida House passed two bills relating to sealing eviction records on Thursday, but both are unlikely to pass the Senate. Yet the topics raise broader questions about access to eviction lawsuit records in Florida.

House Bill 1195 – sponsored by Rep. Vance Aloupis, R-Miami – and linked House Bill 1193 would exempt information from public court records of eviction proceedings and expunge the records starting July 1.

In presenting the bill to various committees, Aloupis cites studies of evictions complicating the ability to find affordable and livable housing, and that this bill would create an opportunity for a renter to have an eviction sealed based on terms laid out in the bill and agreement with the landlord.

House Bill 1195 says a tenant who is a defendant in an eviction lawsuit could have their name removed from the records and that the records would be confidential and exempt from public records laws. The bill describes these exemptions as a "public necessity" to allow tenants to find affordable housing across the state.

"Florida has the third-highest homeless population in the United States. Defendants in eviction proceedings are frequently blacklisted by landlords and are unable to rent affordable housing, regardless of whether a judgment was ever entered against the defendant," the bill reads, in part. "This results in increased homelessness and negatively affects this state's economy and the public health of its residents."

The linked bill says tenants or mobile homeowners who are defendants in eviction lawsuits could file a motion to have the records sealed and have their name removed from the records to be replaced with the non-identifying "tenant," if certain conditions are met.

Excluded from protection under this bill are people who have had a judgment against them in two or more eviction proceedings in a year and people who have had a judgment against them in three or more eviction proceedings in a two-year period, according to the bill.

Linda Harradine, executive director of Legal Aid of Manasota, said if each individual case is not searched to see what happened, an eviction on a tenant's record can be enough for some landlords to turn them away.

Harradine said the exclusion of tenants who have had multiple eviction proceedings is an attempt to alert landlords of renters who may have chronic issues. The people who would qualify for relief under this legislation are those who show they've done their due diligence to meet in the middle with the landlord by things like paying money they owe, leaving the property on time, or if the court ruled in favor of them, among other provisions.

"These are people who made every attempt to try to settle with their landlord and try to do the right thing, just like landlords try to do the right thing," Harradine said.

'The goal is to never have
to file an eviction lawsuit'

Amanda Gill, Florida Apartment Association government affairs director, said simply turning away tenants because of an eviction filing without looking at the specifics is not the most common case for landlords. Many members of the Florida Apartment Association, which represents more than 800,000 apartment homes, don't stop at seeing an eviction filing and turn tenants away, Gill said, and view filing an eviction lawsuit as a last option.

Gill said survey data of their members shows landlords are two to three times more likely to work with tenants on a payment plan than to file an eviction. Proposed legislation like this could "do more harm than good," she said. If an eviction is filed and a renter owes a debt, that unpaid debt could potentially hurt credit scores and tenants could instead be denied because of that.

"Policies like this, while well-intentioned, end up hurting the very people they're designed to help," Gill said. "If you're taking the housing providers' ability to assess risk away, they're going to have to mitigate their financial risk another way."

Potential real estate investors, developers or landlords could decide not to build or rent, which could skew both the market-rate and affordable housing markets in Florida in a time when there are shortages of both, Gill said.

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"I understand why there's a lot of emphasis on the resident-focused concerns, but I also think that the housing providers' story just isn't really being talked about enough, and things like this that make it harder for housing providers to do business potentially could result in people taking their investment elsewhere," Gill said.

Ryan McCain, an attorney who represents landlords and apartment communities, and is a landlord himself, said most of the multifamily apartment communities his firm represents will not automatically deny someone for having an eviction lawsuit filed against them and that they will view the judgment of the case. Apartment communities file eviction lawsuits a small percentage of the time, McCain said, as a last resort, and most landlords try to work with tenants to avoid that.

"The goal is to never have to file an eviction lawsuit," McCain said. "You never want to do that as a landlord. It's usually a very last step after you've exhausted all options to do whatever you can within reason to keep that person on the property."

Public access versus financial privacy

The two bills pose questions of the "use and misuse" of public information, said Gulfcoast Legal Service Managing Housing Attorney James Kushner. It is a question of whether the necessity of public access to those records outweighs the tenants' need for financial privacy, Kushner said.

An eviction lawsuit showing up could still negatively affect a renter's housing search. Even for an issue that may be the landlord's responsibility to resolve, the tenant is listed as the defendant, Kushner said.

"A lot of it comes down to showing that the practice of keeping evictions publicly recorded negatively affects so many people that it justifies bringing an exception to the longstanding tradition of access to public records," Kushner said. "That's really one of the main battles to getting something like this in and through the Legislature."

Rep. Michael Gottlieb, D-Davie, expressed concerns about data-mining and tenant-screening companies compiling an eviction record the moment the records are filed.

"We're talking about removing a stigma, and I think that's really important because this is a scarlet letter when somebody goes through an event such as this," Gottlieb said to committee members at the March 13 House Civil Justice & Property Rights Subcommittee. "The problem is when we seal this ... we're hiding it from an official source being able to disseminate the information. But this information at the instant of the filing of the case is out there in the public sector."

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There is a time lag with legislation like this. Tenants would have to file a motion for their name to be replaced with "tenant" and have the record made unsearchable by the public. The sealing would not be automatic. Any amount of time that the record is public while a tenant is searching for a new place to live is going to hinder their options, or they could have to pay higher rents or security deposits, Peña Wells said.

Even without any legislation passed to seal eviction records, Peña Wells estimated he has removed about 85% of his clients' eviction records in Pinellas County in the last year. In cases where tenants and landlords agree and a judge signs off on the agreement, Peña Wells has been able to have eviction records removed from the public online docket at the end of the case.

The sealing of sensitive records is commonly used in cases where there are details of business secrets or a divorce, Peña Wells said. He has applied that concept with cases like Trombley's.

"It's something that we've been doing to negotiate as part of the settlement with the landlords and so far most of them have agreed," Peña Wells said.

This story comes from a partnership between the Community Foundation of Sarasota County and the Herald-Tribune, covering the Season of Sharing campaign and how nonprofits in the region are responding to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Angie DiMichele can be reached at adimichele@gannett.com.