State Lawmakers Push Eviction Reform

By Ben Fenwick, Oklahoma Watch

A recent Impact Tulsa report struck home and spurred Rep. Ellen Pogemiller to craft a law to help stop it.

It’s too late for some.

The study, using data from 2024, shows that high rates of chronic absenteeism in Tulsa Public Schools come from families who have been evicted from their homes. And that’s not the worst of it, she said. 

“ One of the startling figures is the most likely to be evicted in the Tulsa public school system, the highest percentage, are their pre-K and kindergartners,” Pogemiller said. “You know, that was, that was really disheartening to hear.”

Pogemiller, a Democrat representing Oklahoma City’s District 88, is not the only legislator interested in addressing Oklahoma’s high eviction rate. The issue also drew the attention of Rep. Daniel Pae, a Republican from Lawton, who represents District 62. 

Both recently attended eviction court in Oklahoma County to witness firsthand the moment when tenants are called into court, most of whom are unrepresented by an attorney, and many of whom only find they will be locked out of their homes by the county sheriff’s department in as little as 72 hours. 

On that day, the court had fewer cases than in many court sessions, about 160. But Pogemiller said it was still challenging to watch the flow, in which tenants were quickly made to face attorneys representing landlords, alone and with no attorney of their own. 

“People are just churning through there without an opportunity to really understand if there’s a pathway forward for them to not be evicted,” Pogemiller said. “So my goal with legislation that I’m working on — it’s a work in progress — but it’s looking at if there an opportunity for us to fund an attorney in both metro areas and in rural areas who would focus on families in our school systems who have gotten an eviction notice and being a legal representative to them. It doesn’t mean that they won’t be evicted, but it allows them an opportunity to understand the process, to see if there’s a pathway forward for them to stay in their home.”

Pae said he met with Judge Trent Pipes, who that day was presiding over the eviction court. Pae said the judge had some ideas to help lessen the churn of people losing their homes.

“He has an idea to exclude holidays and weekends from the eviction timeline so that it doesn’t become as congested,” Pae said. “Oh, that we saw in the chamber. I think that can hopefully help and that can be a sensible idea that other colleagues can support.”

Pae faced defeat last year when a bipartisan bill he helped author, Senate Bill 128, with Sen. Julia Kirt, a Democrat from Oklahoma City, would have extended eviction trial scheduling by five days and the summons notice period to seven days. Governor Kevin Stitt vetoed the bill, despite its passing in both the House and the Senate.

“This bill would also do the opposite as intended,” Stitt wrote in his veto message. “Instead of assisting renters in arrears, it would incentivize landlords to specifically not rent housing units to low-income households, for risk of greater eviction costs. We cannot overcome economic realities with good intentions. For these reasons, I have vetoed Enrolled Senate Bill 128.”

The Governor’s assertion runs counter to what most advocates suggest, that Oklahoma, sixth in the nation in evictions, makes it easy to evict tenants so quickly that they have little chance to come up with their rent to prevent being put on the street. 

The Impact Tulsa study listed the following factors that lead to high evictions: Low eviction filing fees, short windows on evictions, predatory landlords using filing penalties to bring up rates and inadequate notification were listed by Impact Tulsa as factors contributing to high eviction rates.

Pae said a bill he is working on would address retaliation by landlords against tenants who complain about needed repairs. 

“ I still have a bill that’s carried over from last year on the Landlord-Tenant Act,” Pae said. “We’re one of only six states that have no anti-retaliation provision on our books. There are some landlords, mainly out-of-state corporate landlords, that have either retaliated or have not taken care of these issues. I can tell you that in Lawton, there have been a couple complexes since I first introduced the bill a couple years ago, where this has become an issue. Again, we are only one of six states that has nothing like this on the books.”

Trial and Defeat

A recent Oklahoma Watch report also found that some attorneys profit substantially by filing thousands of evictions each year, receiving state-mandated fees that are passed on to the unlucky tenants who face them. 

“ That’s insane,” Pogemiller said. “That is something wrong with the system.  No one is saying people shouldn’t be evicted. What we’re saying is the timeline and the process has allowed people to utilize our court systems and utilize loopholes on the backs of community members.”

Pogemiller also faced defeat last year when a bill she introduced with Norman Rep. Jared Deck, House Bill 1129, would have raised the eviction filing fees from $50 to $100. Pogemiller and those who supported the bill said raising the eviction fees would make filing them a little more expensive and would incentivize landlords to work out problems with their tenants instead of using eviction as a fee-collection tool. 

She said the effort for the upcoming year won’t be a repeat of legislation she brought to the House floor during the 2025 session.

 ”We want to support and keep meaningfully employed people in their homes,” she said. “It is a very difficult conversation. I did not master it when I got up on the floor and was not adequately prepared to talk about this in a framework that still put pressure on ownership.”

However, she still wants to tackle the core issues driving Oklahoma’s high eviction rate because evictions damage families, students, and the schools they attend. 

“Eviction is tied to the many challenges that tenants face in this state, and that it costs more in the end,” Pogemiller said. “When we move families and we move community members it costs our schools, it can cause stress on families, that’s a healthcare problem. And so I think we’re trying to just level the playing field because it’s been unlevel for so long.”

As to whether these efforts are made law, for some, it’s water under the bridge.

Christmas Without a Home

Eboney Mitchell, whose case was documented in a previous Oklahoma Watch story, said her landlord, AG Homes, demanded her previous month’s rent as well as the rent for December. She paid them the $2,600 for what she hoped would be the opportunity to keep her home, but then was told she had to move out.

“I could have used that money for another place,” she said. 

Now, with diminishing cash, she has to find another place. She has begun putting her things in boxes to take to storage and plans to find an AirBnB for a couple of weeks. But she has no idea where she will go next. 

AG Homes did not return calls from Oklahoma Watch. 

Amy Coldren, the director of advocacy and communication for Mental Health Association Oklahoma, said the situation for Mitchell is multiplied not just by the 18,000 evictions filed in Oklahoma County last year, but over time. Children from families facing homelessness have a pattern that imprints on them and follows them throughout their lives.

“An important thing to also consider is the trauma that that’s inflicting on her children,” Coldren  said of Mitchell’s case. “It has been shown that the loss of housing has an impact similar to, you know, an ACEs score.”

Adverse Childhood Experiences are traumatic events such as abuse, neglect, parental substance use, mental illness and domestic violence that happen to children before age 18, which disrupt their development. High ACE scores are linked to increased risks for chronic health issues, such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, mental health problems such as depression, substance abuse, risky behavior, and poor education outcomes later in life, although healing is possible with support.

A 2022 study published by the National Institutes of Health suggests that housing stability is paramount for young children. 

“Policies and practices that support stable housing not only serve a family’s immediate needs but also have positive long-term health impacts for caregivers and children,” the study states. “Primary prevention of evictions and housing disruption is, of course, the ideal; no young child should have to move repeatedly in their young lives. They need stability, predictability, and routines to support healthy development. For those already disrupted from their homes, secondary and tertiary prevention is needed to prevent further risk and intervene to mediate the impacts that have already occurred.”

Coldren said if the children are facing homelessness, they are likely to have a traumatic impact that’s going to last with them through their lifespan.

She said that even buying a family time, as proposed by Pae, would help. So would Pogemiller’s proposed law providing legal counsel to students’ families facing eviction. 

 ”I don’t know if they have a chance, but I do think that it needs to be a top-of-mind issue for lawmakers,” Coldren said. “Oklahoma is ranked the very bottom in education. We are ranked at the very top in rates of ACEs in children childhood trauma, one of the worst states in terms of childhood wellbeing. We have very, very high incarceration rates, and all of those things are directly impacted by eviction. So if lawmakers truly want to improve things like education, the workforce, stronger communities and stronger neighborhoods, crime reduction, lower rates of foster care, addressing eviction and addressing housing is going to address all of those issues as well.”

Bridge to the Future

Bianca Gordon, the associate executive director for Bridges, a Norman-based charitable organization for homeless high school students, said eviction is frequently a hallmark of their students’ lives. The organization serves numerous students in the Norman and Moore school districts and provides approximately 50 beds for students who would otherwise be living on the streets. These are high school students who are actively enrolled and, despite adversity, attending classes. 

“We’ve seen where a family is moved into a shelter, but it may not be a good environment for children,” she said. “They move into other households and may have to couch surf or there’s other families already in there. We’ve also seen with evictions the students have to maybe move further away to a temporary location, maybe an aunt’s house in a whole other town. And now that aunt has to try to figure out how to get that student either back into school where they live or make the trip to the school that student had been going to. There are far-reaching implications for younger people when eviction is experienced.”

The signs for such students facing hardship are well known but must be watched for. Perhaps the student doesn’t have a coat. Their grades start dropping. Homelessness for students “doesn’t necessarily look like pushing a shopping cart down the street. It doesn’t look like holding up a sign on the side of the highway.”

However, Gordon said, evictions, and with them, student homelessness, are expected to rise with federal cuts working through the system, and charitable organizations such as hers are bracing for it.

“Outside of some of the normal reasons that students become homeless, we have also seen federal decisions,” Gordon said. “For example, someone called on behalf of an employee whose father had been deported. Suddenly, that student was working in food service and they didn’t have a parent to go home to. Then, of course, with the SNAP benefits having paused, all of our students, they qualified for SNAP. So they didn’t have a parent or guardian holding their card for them. It’s their own SNAP benefits. So imagine working in food service, the very minimal hourly wage, a few hours a week because you’re a student first, and now the supplemental assistance you received for food is hanging in the balance.”

Mitchell is also bracing for the future, and bracing her children for it as well.

 ”When they get out of school today, I’m going to have to break it to them,” she said. “Because my daughter, she’s very observant of what’s going on. She said yesterday, ‘Mama, do we have to move?’ I said, ‘Don’t worry your pretty little self with that. Let mama worry about that.’”
She said she has already told them not to expect presents this Christmas.

“ I just told them, ‘Mama can’t give you no Christmas at Christmastime,’” she said. “‘Don’t worry about it. We’ll have Christmas in January.’”

Oklahoma Watch, at oklahomawatch.org, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers public-policy issues facing the state.