I got up this morning with a truck in our shared driveway with the bailiff from the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s department telling Jordan that they were evicting our neighbor. Our neighbor is a tenant and payed her rent to a landlord who stopped paying his mortgage. She, a single parent, and her two daughters were not home. She told us that she had until October 13th to move, and had recently put a deposit down on an apartment. The house is owned by

Citibank.

We explained this to the bailiff and he said that he didn’t care and that his orders were to evict her. He called the police on me for disturbing the peace.

Fortunately, one of her daughters came home and was able to call the mother. The bailiff promised that he would wait until she got there. Jordan tried to call Judge Montgomery’s office, but was only allowed to leave a message, Citibank said that it was out of their hands and that

evidently the bank’s lawyer, a Mr. Ginsberg, changed his mind and couldn’t wait 4 days until the 13th.

I just heard back from Jordan that they are going ahead with the eviction.

It is criminal that banks like Citibank just received a 700 billion dollar bailout bill, while my neighbor, a tenant, gets kicked to the curb.

Yesterday, the sheriff of Chicago and Cooks County said that he will stop evictions on foreclosed properties. He is doing this because many people being evicted were tenants that were paying their rent, but did not know that their homes were being foreclosed on.

It is time for the sheriffs here to do the same, I am urging all of you to call and fax your sheriff’s department and urge them to stop the evictions. Share the article about the sheriffs in Chicago.

Here are the local sheriffs departments:

Cuyahoga County Sheriff

Gerald T. McFaul

ph: 216-443-6000

fax: 216-348-4353

Lake County Sheriff

Dan Dunlap

ph:440-350-5620

fax: 440-350-5590

Geauga County Sheriff

Dan McClelland

ph: 440-279-2009

fax: 440-286-3251

Dr. Michael Polsinelli

Updated: After several calls with the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department, I was told that they do not evict tenants that are caught in a foreclosure. (The woman that I talked while the sheriff’s department does evict people, they found it wrong to evict tenants that are caught between absent landlords and the banks.) Evictions of tenants by banks of foreclosed homes are being done by municipal courts. Here is the phone number of Judge K. J. Montgomery who presided over this case and is allowing evictions of tenants to happen: (216) 491-1326.