TULSA, Okla. — April Miller is getting her life back on track.
“I just got a job, and I don't get paid until the 16th,” she said.
She's excited about going to work for Tulsa Public Schools' custodian department. To avoid eviction, she's applying for assistance from Housing Solutions to pay back rent.
Tulsa County saw 13,000 eviction cases filed last year. April desperately wants to avoid becoming one of this year’s statistics.
Oklahoma law makes eviction easy for landlords; tenants who are as little as five days late on rent can find themselves in eviction court. SB 128, a bill at the state capitol to expand that deadline to 10 days, cleared its first hurdle without opposition, surprising its author.
“We had a lot of people come to the Capitol to talk to the committee about the bill and how it would help. I think that made a big difference,” said Sen. Julia Kirt, D-Oklahoma City.
Local News
Bill seeks to help those behind on rent get more time to pay to avoid eviction
Kirt is advocating for this bill because she said, "Quick eviction encourages eviction instead of mediation or payment plans.”
She found that many landlords are willing to work with tenants like April to bring rent up-to-date.
However, Kirt noted, “Oklahoma has a lot of out-of-state landlords, and a huge percentage of evictions are filed by a couple of companies. That creates a real burden on our court system.”
SB 149 by Senator Mary Boren aimed to protect renters from retaliation for filing complaints about unsafe conditions or landlords failing to make repairs. She was disappointed that it did not get a committee hearing by the end of last week, rendering it dead for this session. But she plans to try again next year.
Here are summaries of those measures.
SENATE BILL 128:
SB 128 extends the minimum time a person must appear in court for eviction proceedings relating to nonpayment after a summons is issued from 5 days to 10 days after the issuance of the summons. The measure establishes that such summons shall not request the appearance of a person in court more than 15 days after the summons is issued. The measure requires the summons to be delivered at least 7 days before the scheduled hearing instead of 3 days before the hearing. The measure provides that the summons shall be delivered at least 3 or 5 days before certain trials.
SENATE BILL 149:
SB 149 provides that if a landlord retaliates against a tenant who exercised his or her right granted by law or submitted a complaint to an appropriate agency, the landlord many not recover possessions of a dwelling in any action or proceeding, cause the tenant to quit involuntarily, increase the rent, or decrease any services within 180 days of the circumstances described above. The measure provides that a landlord will be liable for actual damages as well as punitive damages between $10000-$2,000.00 per retaliatory act. The measure requires any municipality with a population greater than 100,000 the maintain a list of code violations for rental properties within the municipality limits.
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