Maintenance Course Beginning & Advanced HVAC

MEC Breakfast Highlights

With these new changes, the only eviction cases that should be transferred by the Court’s order are non-payment cases with applications that were filed before the MAC portal closed. Because MAC’s portal has now closed, residents can no longer file a new assistance application the day of court and delay the proceedings. This should eliminate at least some of the cases transferred to HRDC these first weeks of July, and any new eviction filings for non-payment of rents after July should be almost entirely unaffected by the Housing Court. How a pending application with THDA will affect the eviction process, if at all, is yet to be determined.

The agencies and judges involved in this process have agreed that a landlord cannot be compelled to accept rental assistance from any agency. In practice, the concept is not always applied consistently. Even in a situation where the landlord does not want to accept MAC funding through a previously filed application, the pending MAC application means the HRDC will be involved and will routinely allow extra time – well beyond the normal timelines – for a resident to vacate.

If a landlord determines that they no longer want to accept rental assistance, there are two things that should be done: (1) file the detainer warrant immediately, if it hasn’t already been filed, and (2) make sure your attorney knows you do not want to accept rental assistance, whether from a pending MAC application or from a new THDA application. The sooner the “landlord refusal” process starts, the sooner it will end.

The next meeting of the Housing Resource Diversionary Court is July 12, 2022. We hope to learn more about how these procedures and practices will evolve following the MAC portal’s closing and how the HRDC intends to operate over the next few months while the final remaining MAC applications are completed.