Twelve hours after the first of 10 families were evicted from the Enclave Apartments in White Oak, all residents had found other housing.
On Tuesday, Councilmember Kristin Mink and numerous volunteers helped as the members of the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office conducted simultaneous evictions of three refugee families and seven other families.
“Oh, this is not the end. There are still many more families” throughout Montgomery County facing eviction, she told MCM. “This year, the numbers are way up.”
Montgomery County officials assisted residents in finding new places to stay and connecting them with resources and “making sure everyone ended up under a roof,” Mink said.
A truck driver volunteered throughout the day to help move belongings from four families into a storage facility that was paid for by community donations.
After seeing a child coming home from school to see what was happening, Mink wrote on social media, “There is no good answer for a crying elementary student asking, ‘How do I go home” Why is this happening?’
There were more than 10 families facing eviction, but some managed to move or pay or have their court cases corrected, Mink said.
One of the families had only been in the United States for 10 months, which Mink called “a clear and massive failure by their resettlement agency.”
In the piles of belongings tossed outside the apartment complex were furniture, clothing, a passport, photos, school papers and baby supplies, Mink said.
Mink asked that anyone interested in volunteering or donating to support evicted families to contact her office at Councilmember.Mink@montgomerycounty.md.gov or fill out this form.
Eviction actually is a lengthy process that begins when a tenant receives a failure to pay rent notice from a landlord. This notice must be sent and posted before a landlord can begin court proceedings.
In 2023, 34,813 tenants received failure to pay rent notices. “We are easily going to eclipse what we did in 2023,” Robert Lehman, Montgomery County Chief Deputy in the sheriff’s office, told MCM in September.
When someone receives three of these notices, a landlord is permitted to request the courts order a tenant evicted.
The county sheriff’s office “schedules a lot of evictions,” and it takes eight to 12 weeks to even schedule an eviction,” Lehman said.
Photos Courtesy of Councilmember Kristin Mink
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