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THREAD: 1/ I want to tell you about an investigative story we just published today. The gist is that we found a SC landlord company that’s filed 6,700 evictions since 2019, likely the most in the state. https://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/news/state/south-carolina/article244764772.html#storylink=mainstage_lead
2/ What I want to talk about specifically is how we came across this story and why we decided it was important enough to devote so much time and resources to it.
3/ It started as just my curiosity about how SC’s eviction process would be impacted by the #coronavirus moratorium, so I started keeping a spreadsheet on all filings in Horry, mostly just looking to see if there was a spike, which there was initially: https://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/news/local/article242838876.html
4/ About a month into my data entry, I noticed a single apartment complex, Ivystone Apartments in Myrtle Beach, filed 65 evictions on a single day.
5/ I wondered whether that was just due to COVID-19 impacting its tenants’ ability to pay, but quickly found this complex had a pattern of doing this just about every month for years.
6/ After initially looking into this story as just something at Ivystone Apartments, I found that its owner, Powers Properties, owns a bunch of properties across SC and decided to look up whether they did the same thing in other counties, which of course we now know they did.
7/ Naturally the questions became: Is this company based out of Florence the number one eviction filer in the state? And why file so many so frequently?
8/ As you might expect, a lot (multiple work days-worth) of time had to be spent on data entry trying to answer that first question, and we ultimately found we couldn’t say with 100 percent confidence that they are number one because landlords file under so many different names.
9/ Even Powers Properties, which typically filed under its own name, filed, as previously mentioned under Ivystone Apartments in Horry, and often misspelled its own name, as I caught more than a few filings under Power Properties or even Powers Propereties
10/ That’s not to say I didn’t try, as I looked up all the top filer names in each county where Powers had properties and ran searches on their names, apartment names, and LLCs registered to their owners in every county where I could find those landlord companies had properties.
11/ The question of why was easier to answer thanks to assistance from housing attorneys at @AppleseedSC and @sclegal, who were able to explain that this practice, known as serial filing, is fairly common and legal, though not in the spirit of the law.
12/ Typically, it’s used a debt collection tool, and it can have long-lasting impacts on the tenants, who can end up with dozens of filings on their public record, even if the filing had no merit.
13/ That’s where @Lucasgsl6 with our sister paper @IslandPacket and @TheSunNews @Report4America reporter @mary_norkol helped really turn this story from just numbers and studies to show the real human impact of serial eviction filing.
14/ I’ve had numerous stories where the data seemed to tell an interesting story, but I couldn’t find the right people willing to talk, so the work Lucas and Mary did in finding current and former tenants facing these evictions willing to speak to us was so important.
15/ I’ve already received several emails about this story critical of trying to make it appear that tenants who don’t pay are somehow victims. I certainly understand this isn’t a black and white issue (most stories aren’t).
16/ But I urge you to read for yourself and decide whether the system we have in place, that allows this to continue, is the most effective. https://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/news/state/south-carolina/article244764772.html#storylink=mainstage_lead
17/ Also, you’ll notice this story is for subscribers only, so… you know… please subscribe! https://account.myrtlebeachonline.com/subscribe
