Tonda Tyson, 66, sits in the lobby of the courthouse in downtown Tampa.
“Recently, this place has been familiar to me,” she said.
In May, she found an eviction notice in her mailbox.
She lived with her husband, Cliff, in an apartment subsidized by the Tampa Housing Authority. He typically handled the finances, so she was surprised to learn they were three months behind on rent.
Then, on Memorial Day, he suffered a stroke.
The next day, with her husband in the hospital, she went down to the 13th district circuit court, where she sits now to take in the scene: the shiny, cold floor, the chatter of security guards manning the sliding glass doors and, to her left, rows of chairs reminiscent of the DMV.
Ordinary people without attorneys are called up one-by-one to file motions with the court. Tyson remembers how it felt when the clerk called her name, months ago.
“I didn’t know what to do,” she said. “I walked up to the clerk, expecting her to tell me what I needed to do, but we just stared at each other.”
Luckily, Tyson said, she overheard someone in a similar situation file an “emergency stay,” or a temporary pause of the eviction process.
So, she did, too.
In two handwritten letters, she explained her situation to the judge: how her husband had mismanaged their funds without her knowledge and how days after being served with an eviction notice, her husband was hospitalized.
“When you’re poor, all you have is your word,” she said.
Few good options
Jacob Haas, an Eviction Lab researcher at Princeton University, said that Tyson’s experience is not unusual.
In May, she was one of 1,768 renters in the Tampa metro facing eviction, according to data from the Eviction Lab.
That’s higher than the average number of evictions, at 1,472 filings, from the same month before 2020, marking the 10th consecutive month in which eviction filings exceeded pre-pandemic levels. July marks a full calendar year of above-average filing rates, according to the latest data.
In Florida, data shows renters in public housing are more vulnerable to eviction, too.
According to data from the Eviction Lab, serial eviction rates in public housing units slightly exceed those in private, market-rate units.
A spokesperson for Tampa's public housing agency, which acted as Tyson's landlord, said they are as lenient as they can while still abiding by local and federal regulations.
"We're about housing our families and not evicting them," said assisted housing director Margaret Jones.
Haas said that there's a lot of variability in how public housing agencies approach eviction, but it is known that residents who qualify for housing assistance in the first place are more vulnerable to the consequences of forced displacement.
One study found that eviction often acts as “a double blow” to public housing tenants, leaving them with the immediate loss of shelter as well as the loss of substantial housing assistance in the future.
In other words, there’s few good options for renters in Tyson’s situation.
Pay to play
After writing the judge, Tyson was granted an emergency stay of five days, and now had to come up with the more than $3,000 in overdue rent, if she wanted her day in court.
In Tyson’s case, she had to clear out her savings account in order to get a hearing.
Florida is one of the only states with statutes— appropriately named "pay to play measures" — that require renters to pay back what’s owed before they can be considered for an eviction hearing. Defendants must also continue to deposit rent into the court registry for as long as the eviction process is ongoing.
Tom DiFiore, an attorney with Bay Area Legal Services, said this can be a significant financial barrier.
“So a lot of times the question [is] to deposit or not [to] deposit…because if you deposit it and you lose – you lose your money, you're evicted and you have no money to move with,” he said.
That’s why DiFiore said they’ll advise renters on the costs and benefits of challenging an eviction in the first place.
But for renters without legal representation, like Tyson, they often end up at court with a lot at stake.
“When I went to court, I pleaded with these people. If you want me out – fine. Just give me more time. Give me at least a couple of paychecks under my belt…at least until school starts” Tyson said.
She works as a tutor for a Clearwater high school and goes without income during the summer months.
Tyson reached a settlement with her landlord and avoided a formal eviction judgment on her record. The catch: she still had to move out by the end of the month.
And by now she was alone. Her husband never fully recovered from the stroke and passed away two weeks earlier.
“So I walked out the courtroom with that information. However, I still had a funeral to finance and I still had the first month’s rent to come up with, last month's rent to come up with, a security deposit to come up with – and I had to hire movers to move my furniture because I'm a senior citizen.”
Experts say the cost that Tyson paid to avoid an eviction may have been just as damaging as an eviction itself. There's also no guarantee that landlords won't use the eviction hearing against Tyson in the future.
The cost of avoiding eviction
At the end of July, Tyson is packing up her old apartment to move.
She was approved for a new place in Tarpon Springs, and despite the rent being $400 more than she’s comfortable paying, she signed immediately.
Tyson moved most of her belongings by herself. In total, completing more than a dozen trips in her 2008 Chevy Trailblazer that’s pushing 250,000 miles.
On the many two-hour round trips between apartments, Tyson said she’s had a lot of time to consider what this process has cost her.
“Right now, my entire savings is exhausted. I borrowed money for August rent. Good thing that I have decent credit – if not, I would be living in my car that’s almost 20 years old,” she said. “I was planning on retiring this year in January, but I am so far in the hole that I'm going to have to pick up a second job and maybe work another three or four years.”
There’s been another cost to all of this, too – one that’s hard to quantify.
The process has left her little time to grieve her husband and the home they shared.
She stops in the hallway where two clergy robes hang off of the door frame. The colorful lapel, a pattern of green, yellow and red, signifies the African Methodist Episcopal Church where he served as a pastor.
Tyson said her faith has helped pull her through these last few months.
“I keep in mind that God’s word says, ‘I didn’t bring you this far to leave you behind.’”
Though these days, she said she’s praying for stability because she can’t afford even one more emergency.
Gabriella Paul covers the stories of people living paycheck to paycheck in the greater Tampa Bay region for WUSF. She's also a Report for America corps member. Here’s how you can share your story with her.
