The 35 leaseholders will have 10 days to appeal the judgment or try to negotiate with management on a plan to stay. Seventeen others RRHA sought to evict paid what they owed before appearing in court, the housing authority said in a statement issued late Tuesday.

“It is our hope that the remaining residents are able to fulfill their rental obligations to avoid eviction,” Duncan said in the statement.

Most of the cases heard Tuesday took less than a minute. Attorneys working with the city’s new eviction diversion program sat in on the hearing but did not assist the Creighton residents; RRHA had not previously agreed to participate in the pilot program. Duncan said in the statement that the housing authority had now committed to do so.

In 2017, no landlord in the state threatened to evict more tenants than RRHA.

The housing authority filed 1,460 eviction lawsuits against tenants living in the 4,000 apartments it manages, a Richmond Times-Dispatch analysis found. RRHA did not immediately provide figures for this year in response to a Times-Dispatch request Wednesday.

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Throughout the day, news of what housing advocates called a “mass eviction” at Creighton spread on social media.