Group Demands Moratorium On Evictions
CHICAGO (WBBM) - The Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign delivered a five day notice to Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart demanding he impose a moratorium on all financially motivated evictions in Cook County.
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The group claims that Cook County's record number of foreclosures has marked Chicago as the nation's leader in evictions, severely impacting the city's African-American and Latino neighborhoods.
Some banks have suspended foreclosures amid allegations of widespread problems with foreclosure paperwork. But the group says that's not enough. They want Dart to stop all economically motivated evictions and foreclosures in Cook County.
Sheriff Dart made national headlines when he announced a halt to all foreclosure evictions in October 2008. That moratorium lasted less than two weeks.
Written response from Tom Dart spokesman, Steve Patterson
Two years ago this month, Sheriff Dart took a stand and refused to evict anyone facing a foreclosure eviction until assurances could be put into place that banks were properly notifying affected families of the foreclosure. We continue to work every single day to ensure the thousands of evictions we carry out are lawful ones. Because our role in a foreclosure comes at the very end of a process that sometimes takes years, we often aren't provided all of the relevant information about the history of that foreclosure. We know there are massive problems with mortgage foreclosures in Chicago and across the country and are glad community groups are as passionately concerned about that process as we are. We're continuing to research this issue and work with community groups to make sure no one is improperly evicted in Cook County.
