Rekeesha Thomas’ 4-year-old daughter had to pee.
They were driving back from a couple of days at Thomas’ sister’s house. There had been a birthday party for a cousin.
“Hold it, baby,†Thomas told her daughter as they neared their rental home in Hyde Park on the north side of ºüÀêÊÓƵ.
They got to the house but couldn’t get in. There was a padlock on the front door. The screen door was screwed to the frame. The landlord, Larry Davis, had locked them out.
“My daughter peed herself right there on the front porch,†Thomas says.
It was Nov. 13, last year. Just a few days before, Davis had told Thomas to get out of the home she was renting from him. She had only been there a month. Thomas paid her first and last month’s rent and a deposit. But in early November, she was robbed, and the thief took her November rent, which she had been saving up in cash. She called Davis to try to make arrangements to pay over the next few weeks. At the time, Thomas was living on unemployment benefits.
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She was robbed on a Thursday, told to get out on Friday, and locked out of her home, with all of her possessions, by Sunday.
“I was begging and arguing and pleading with him,†Thomas says.
Her experience is not an unusual one in ºüÀêÊÓƵ.
Despite requirements in state law that landlords must go through a court process to evict tenants, poor people with few places to turn are frequently locked out of their rental properties all over ºüÀêÊÓƵ, their few possessions taken by landlords.
They are driven deeper into poverty. Often, as Thomas was for several months, they end up homeless.
“It’s happening all over ºüÀêÊÓƵ,†says attorney Robert Swearingen, with , the largest legal aid nonprofit agency in the ºüÀêÊÓƵ region. “It’s epidemic.â€
The problem, as Swearingen explains it, is that “forcible entry and detainer†— the process of a landlord locking out a tenant without a court order — is a violation of civil law. There is no criminal law in ºüÀêÊÓƵ or Missouri making such actions illegal.
That means police are often called by people like Thomas and they arrive and try to help, but short of calling the landlord can’t do anything.
“Renters in this situation call the police because they assume it’s illegal,†Swearingen says. “The police often want to do the right thing, but it’s a civil matter.â€
Thomas called the police. She went to see a judge. Eventually, she found Swearingen and he filed a lawsuit against Davis. In March, she won an $11,000 judgment against her former landlord, who didn’t show up for court. Davis, who lives in Florissant, couldn’t be reached for this column. Swearingen hasn’t yet been able to collect on behalf of Thomas.
In the meantime, the ºüÀêÊÓƵ Board of Aldermen might do something about this problem.
In June, Alderman Terry Kennedy to create the crime of illegal eviction. The penalty would be a fine of up to $500 and up to 90 days in jail. The bill was filed after by the Metropolitan ºüÀêÊÓƵ Equal Housing Opportunity Council, Empower Missouri, and another nonprofit law firm, ArchCity Defenders, which also has been who find themselves in a situation like the one Thomas faced.
The 35-year-old lives in an apartment just south of Fountain Park now. She’s pregnant with twins. On Wednesday, her brother was over helping her with her car, which had stopped working after she got home from a doctor’s appointment.
“I don’t want this to happen to somebody else,†she told me. “It was terrible.â€
Eventually, she got most of her possessions back from the landlord. On Swearingen’s advice, she and her brother went to the house, cut the padlock and gathered her things.
Most of her belongings were stuffed into garbage bags. Some of it was missing. As she and her brother took items out of the house, Davis drove around the block over and over again, she said.
“He basically got me into this house to rob me,†Thomas says of Davis. “It was a complete nightmare.â€