LAS VEGAS — Burke Hall packed his modest two-bedroom apartment into boxes this week, not knowing where he was next going to have a roof over his head.
Miscommunication with a court-based eviction diversion program, designed to help tenants who've hit an economic snag, put the military veteran on a path to homelessness with no public recourse, according to the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada.
“I'll be living in my car, and I'm one of the lucky ones,” Hall said in a whimper Tuesday, a day before the landlord was expected to lock him out of the apartment. “I have a car to live in. A lot of the families living out on the street, they don't have that; they need our help.”
But hours before the deadline, thanks to a referral from the legal aid center, the United Labor Agency of Nevada nonprofit stepped up to pay Hall's back-owed rent, prompting the complex to halt the eviction. His church also pitched in to keep him afloat while he regains his footing.
With the payment, the landlord rescinded the eviction, and the court dismissed and sealed the case, a Las Vegas Justice Court administrator said Thursday.
But Hall is one of the many faces of Clark County's eviction crisis, where filings for the proceedings have exploded since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Explosion of Evictions
A Princeton University-based “Eviction Lab” data analysis states that nearly 140,000 eviction proceedings have begun in Clark County since…
