By Anita Miller
The Supreme Court of Texas has extended the moratorium on evictions.
An earlier order delaying filing of notices of eviction until May 8 also covered other civil proceeding in Texas Justice of the Peace, County Court-at-Law and District Courts.
The Supreme Court has now extended that deadline to May 18. That date is in keeping with a hoped-for phase two of measures to reopen the state’s commerce announced April 27 by Gov. Greg Abbott.
According to Hays County Pct. 2 JP Beth Smith, that means once a landlord issues the notice, it takes a day or two for the notice to be served to the tenant by a county constable. Once the notice is filed, Smith said, she must decide the case within 10 to 21 days. “No hearings will be held until June 1,” she told the Hays Free Press.
Though her office is officially closed, Smith and her staff have been working so as not to get behind on day-to-day functions. “The phones have been ringing off the wall,” she said, with callers unsure about the status of their traffic tickets and other concerns.
An undetermined number of tenants at the Vista Plum Creek Apartments in Kyle found eviction notices on their doors April 5, but they were invalid due to the Supreme Court’s ruling. Smith said while she expects to be busy once cases can be heard, she doesn’t expect a “huge backlog.”
Kyle’s mayor had strong words for the managers of the complex, which is a property of GVA Property Management.
Mayor Travis Mitchell called the posting of the notices during a statewide shelter in place order “reprehensible and shameful.”
Evictions are still allowed in cases “in which a tenant or household members or guests have threatened or pose an imminent threat of physical harm to the plaintiff, the plaintiff’s employees or other tenants, or criminal activity.” In those cases, the state’s highest court held that a court “must” order the case to proceed.
