Dayton Court Offers Sealing of Eviction Records
July 31, 2024
Dayton Municipal Court has launched a new process to seal eviction case records that tenants' rights groups say hopefully will help people avoid losing access to decent housing opportunities.
Nearly 3,000 eviction cases were filed in Dayton Municipal Court last year, and tenant advocates say virtually every case has the potential to cause significant and long-lasting harm to renters.
Dayton Municipal Court Clerk Marty Gehres said this new initiative hopefully will help large numbers of people remove a “Scarlet E” — an eviction filing — from their records.
“We want as many people as possible to come in and take advantage of this sealing” process, he said. “As soon as you get an eviction, it becomes extremely hard to find stable housing.”
A local attorney who represents a lot of landlords said he believes record sealing can be beneficial to renters and landlords if the housing providers can negotiate terms to receive things like an apology or payment of back rent from former tenants.
Court changes
A couple of months ago, all five Dayton Municipal Court judges approved a new court rule to create a procedure for sealing eviction records.
The court rule took effect this month, and court officials are meeting with media this week to highlight the new program.
Tenants can now submit applications to the Dayton Municipal Court to have their eviction cases sealed.
Renters can file an application 60 days after their cases were dismissed or the court made a judgment in their favor.
In cases where the court ruled in favor of the landlord and an eviction was granted, tenants can file an application six months after the date of a judgment on the first cause. To qualify, tenants in those situations cannot have an eviction judgment against them in Dayton Municipal Court in the past three years.
The court notifies the plaintiffs (the landlords or their attorneys) when it receives a request for record sealing. The plaintiffs get a chance to respond.
Both sides can request a hearing with a magistrate.
The reasoning
Gehres said civil cases cannot be expunged like criminal cases, but sealing the eviction records will make them inaccessible to the public. Expungement results in the destruction of the records.
Gehres said an eviction record can hurt renters during the screening process even if the evictions were dismissed or they happened long ago or the tenants prevailed.
Alice Wood, a member of the Dayton Tenant Union, said when people get evictions on their records it creates a huge obstacle when searching or qualifying for housing.
“Eviction filings hurt a person’s chance of finding housing a great deal because most property owners state ‘no evictions within the last three to five years’ or ‘no evictions ever’ as a qualifying factor on their ads,” she said.
Weber said this court rule is a big step to help reduce the negative impact of evictions and prevent homelessness.
Ohio does not have a statewide law about sealing eviction records, but a variety of municipal courts across the state have a process to seal these cases, including Cleveland, Akron and Toledo.
Larry Lasky, an attorney who represents about 1,000 landlords every year, said he handles cases in a couple of jurisdictions that have record sealing procedures for evictions.
He said this process can be helpful for landlords because they can ask the tenant for concessions like paying some of the rent they still owed.
Lasky said his clients don’t want their former tenants to be homeless. He said landlords realize tenants often don’t pay rent because they don’t have the money.
But Lasky said some people evicted for very good reasons like the did not pay a lot of rent or they caused significant damage to their units.
Sarah Weber, staff attorney with Advocates for Basic Legal Equality (ABLE), said the eviction sealing rule definitely will help community members — potentially lots of the
She said she hopes other municipal courts adopt similar rules.
“The process in which Dayton municipal has rolled this new local rule out provides easy-to-complete court forms, a handy easy-to-read overview regarding who qualifies, assistance from court staff through its Help Center and it is free,” Weber said.
Since 2020, Dayton Municipal Court has removed eviction cases from its online search tool after three years.
But the case information is still available upon public request, and some companies obtain these records en masse to assist landlords when they do background checks.