Lancaster state rep. wants to seal certain eviction records gains support of key Democratic leaders

• By Jaxon White/LNP | LancasterOnline

This story is published in partnership with our sister newsroom LNP | LancasterOnline.

Lancaster city resident Katrina Holmes received an abrupt notice two weeks ago, saying she and her family had 45 days to vacate their home before her landlord filed a notice of eviction.

She and her children started packing immediately because she knew an eviction notice on her record would make it even harder for her to find a new home, she said.

“The fear of being rejected by landlords due to past evictions adds an extra layer of stress, making it difficult to secure a safe and permanent home,” said Holmes, who last week won a seat on the School District of Lancaster school board.

From a podium in the state Capitol, Holmes joined Democratic state lawmakers Monday in urging the General Assembly to pass state Rep. Ismail Smith-Wade-El’s bill to seal eviction records from the public eye until a court can determine whether the tenant was at fault.

Currently, eviction filings remain on a tenant’s record even if they’re found to be not at fault by the court.

Smith-Wade-El, a Lancaster city Democrat, said “just the filings can haunt people” because they are often an automatic disqualifier for people looking for a new home.

Under his proposal, a filing would be kept private until the court’s final ruling and removed from a tenant’s record if they’re found to be not at fault. Filings that show a tenant is to blame also would be sealed five years after the ruling.

“No families should have to be concerned that an inaccurate record or an eviction from years ago should prevent them from keeping their family, their kids safe, warm and dry,” Smith-Wade-El said.

Smith-Wade-El, who serves on the chamber’s Housing & Community Development Committee, has made housing access policy a priority of his during his first term in office. Prior to entering politics, he worked for the Lancaster County Homeless Coalition. At least three of his co-sponsored bills this year look to increase protections for residential tenants.

Dominique Wiggins, a supervising attorney at Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, said eviction filings often lack the full story of what led to the eviction.

“For example, a filing shows the complaints of the landlord but not the issues faced by the tenants,” Wiggins said. “It shows a tenant late on rent and a lease not being renewed, but it doesn’t show that the tenant asserted their legal rights to withhold rent because the landlord refused to make necessary repairs.”

Her organization published a study earlier this year that found more than 114,000 Pennsylvanians had evictions filed against them between the summers of 2022 and 2023. The study also found that Black and Latina women were disproportionately more likely to have an eviction case filed against them.

The bill’s supporters

“Using our courts as weapons against marginalized communities is offensive,” said House Appropriations Chair Jordan Harris, D-Philadelphia.

Harris is one of the state Democratic Party leaders who is backing the bill, improving the legislation’s likelihood to pass out of the House.

“It is imperative that we move this legislation to protect folks because when you don’t have this type of protection, you are making folks susceptible to any kind of treatment by their landlords,” he said.

The threat of eviction is often leveraged against tenants to keep them quiet about health dangers or needed repairs in the building, Harris said. But Smith-Wade-El’s legislation would prevent landlords from having the ability to threaten tenants with eviction filings.

A spokesman for the Pennsylvania Apartment Association said his group has not taken a formal position on the legislation yet, but its members have scheduled meetings with lawmakers to have discussions about the bill.

Neither the Landlord Association of PA nor the Central PA Landlords Association responded to a request for comment Monday.

Senate Democratic Leader Jay Costa, who co-signed a companion version of the bill in the Senate, said his district in Allegheny County includes neighborhoods with some of the worst eviction data in the state.

“What we have to do is find ways to remove barriers, making certain that we’re taking steps to be able to provide folks the opportunity to find a home,” he said.