In the midst of the holiday season, no one wanted to be here.

Yet hundreds of people — homeowners, tenants, landlords — mobbed the fifth floor of Boston Housing Court on a recent Thursday, shuffling into courtrooms on what is unofficially known as eviction day.

The homeowners facing eviction have already lost their houses to foreclosure but will not move willingly, clinging to a desperate hope that they can stave off eviction and find a way to buy back their homes.

The prospects are dim. Few, if any, can even afford a lawyer.

If foreclosure is the final chapter of homeownership, a court eviction hearing is the weary epilogue.

Just two years ago, hearings involving foreclosed homeowners were relatively rare, occurring once a month or less. But soaring foreclosures, which have continued to rise in recent months, have flooded the court with such eviction requests.

On this Thursday at Boston Housing Court, there were nearly 30 cases, involving people from many walks of life, from a single working mother to a 75-year-old retiree to a city police officer.

Some manage to postpone eviction, while others are not so lucky.

Joan Williamson, a 44-year-old housekeeper at a Sheraton hotel, appeared in court for the third time to fight eviction from her Dorchester home, which she lost in March because she could no longer stretch her $32,000-a-year salary to make the $3,200-a-month mortgage payments.

By then, she had been in the house for four years. Leaving meant uprooting her two teenage daughters and her pregnant stepdaughter, who lives with them. It also meant abandoning the yard where her 5-year-old grandson, who lives in a nearby housing project, plays ball each day.

Each time she goes to court, she worries it will be the day her family is forced from their home. For now, after gaining another postponement, she still has hope that Boston Community Capital, an agency that buys foreclosed houses and sells them back to their former owners, will help. She prays the agency will accept her case.

“I been drained,’’ she said in a thick Jamaican accent. “I been senseless.’’

Usually, foreclosure is a kind of death sentence for homeowners. While state law protects renters living in foreclosed apartments from sudden eviction, banks are under no legal obligation to let former owners stay. After the auction, residents get notices from the banks giving them 72 hours to move or face court-ordered evictions.

Thursdays in Boston Housing Court are when former homeowners confront that cold legal reality. People sit jam-packed in a hushed, standing-room-only courtroom. Judge Jeffrey M. Winik breaks the quiet by offering a few words of encouragement before the hearings start.