Alfred Perry got word on Labor Day weekend.
He’d just thrown one of his signature cookouts in the courtyard of his apartment complex in Las Vegas.
It was the kind of laid-back life he came southwest for.
He decided to stay.
Perry put down the first month’s rent and a deposit and moved in shortly after.
Wright had been having issues with Perry over visitors to his apartment.
So Perry was anxious that Wright wanted him out.
The next day, he said, Wright refused to let him back in.
Perry and his son started living out of his Jeep.
Previous convictions for drug possession madefinding a new apartmentdifficult.
Months passed with the pair living out of Perry’s car.
Perry said he spent a year trying to regain custody.
“But if Dan hadn’t locked me out, I’d still have my son today.”
Perry filed a complaint saying Wright had locked him out illegally.
Protections against these kinds of extrajudicial evictions date back centuries.
The nature of illegal lockouts means they are hard to track directly.
Some of them were inexperienced first-time landlords who may have been unfamiliar with landlord-tenant laws.
Others were corporations and private-equity firms.
Bypassing that system is illegal in most states, whether the landlord’s grievance is justified or not.
And the lack of notice robs tenants of a window in which to line up alternative housing.
In Perry’s case, Wright claimed that Perry left voluntarily, with his possessions.
“I know the laws I don’t mess with them,” Wright said.
“Just because tenants file something, it doesn’t mean something is true,” he said.
A judge never decided who was right in Perry’s case.
His complaint was tossed on a technicality.
He’d missed the window to file.
Tenants and their advocates say lockouts are extraordinarily disruptive.
People often miss days of work orlose their jobas they prioritize finding somewhere to stay.
Children fall behind academically or have to leave school altogether.
“It’s the beginning of a real bunch of trouble.”
‘I’m sick of calling the cops’
Lockouts largely happen out of public view.
But research shows they may be widespread.
Lockouts briefly gained visibility during the coronavirus pandemic, as landlords sought to bypass a federal moratorium on evictions.
But the expiration of the moratorium has not resulted in the abandonment of these illegal tactics.
The landlordsrarely faced consequences.
When the police called her back two hours later, they couldn’t reach her.
The incident was closed as “no action required.”
She said she was stuck doubled up with her grandmother in a local YMCA.
He sat in the entrance to the apartment, undeterred by police officers telling him he could be arrested.
Lockouts are a crime in New Jersey.
The landlord locked her out again two months later for four days, she reported to 911.
Then, they tell her to get a locksmith.
It was a Catch-22.
Bodycam footage shows an officer again trying to call the landlord, but the call goes straight to voicemail.
One of the responding officers calls a sergeant over, who says there’s nothing else they can do.
Jersey City officials did not respond to requests for comment.
If she breaks back into her own home, the sergeant says, she’ll shoulder the risk.
“We’re advising against it, but you’re a grown woman,” one officer tells her.
“What you do is what you do it’s on you.”
Meanwhile, with her uniform locked inside, the Jersey City woman says she missed days of work.
They later found more than 2,000 such calls.
The Atlanta police did not respond to subsequent requests for comment.
A few cities had no relevant categories at all.
BI excluded calls with sufficient information to show they were not pertinent to a lockout.
Instead they have roughly held steady or increased.
In Atlanta, the volume of these calls rose each year from 2020 to 2022.
And in Houston, calls mentioning lockout keywords went up from 2021 to 2022.
Tallies based on police calls are likely an undercount, tenant advocates say.
Data from other agencies showed a similar increase.
We found that these complaints rose 71% from 2020 to 2023.
The volume of housing complaints illustrates how difficult it can be to track off-the-book evictions.
For the same year, complaints to the housing department totaled more than 11,000.
Texas has a similar law.
“People call the police for all sorts of reasons,” Leibowitz said.
But aggressive tactics to remove a resident are not confined tosmall landlordswho may lack familiarity with the law.
The investigators describe the eviction filings as “aggressive” but not unlawful.
(Blackstone sold off its remaining shares of the company in 2019.)
(Some related to commercial tenants.)
“We cannot and will not unilaterally evict a resident from one of our homes.”
“Progress Residential complied with applicable laws,” a company spokesperson said by email.
“Any implication of the contrary is false.”
“They knew about it,” she said.
“They didn’t stop it, they let it go on.”
Corporate landlords have recently come under fire for other potentially illegal tactics.
“The public interest in preserving the peace would seem to justify the temporary inconvenience to the owner.”
So does guidance for New Jersey’s superior courts.
BI also analyzed data on 911 calls in Phoenix from January 2020 through 2023 coded simply as landlord-tenant disputes.
Police officers filed even fewer reports elsewhere.
Atlanta, Miami, and Houston were in the single digits.
In Atlanta, 9% of lockout calls from January 2020 through early 2023 ended in a police report.
Houston police officers wrote reports after only 8% of calls from 2021 to early 2023.
And Miami police officers wrote reports for 8% of calls in 2022.
Police departments in Atlanta, Miami, and Chicago did not respond to detailed requests for comment.
Police data from the start of 2020 through the end of 2023 in Phoenix shows an inverse ratio.
The Council on Criminal Justice has found that themedian cost of shoplifted goodsin 2021 was $100.
‘What’s your plan for tonight?’
Records show relying on the police for help on lockouts is a gamble.
Some recognize a lockout as illegal and direct landlords to the courts for a lawful eviction.
Some resort to searching the internet for guidance.
Tenants' outcomes vary dramatically according to which officers happen to respond.
He received two court summons for the offenses.
But the police could find no record of an arrest in connection with the event.
Other landlords were let off easy.
“What’s your plan for tonight?”
one of the officers asks her.
“I don’t have a plan this is our plan.”
“Do you have a car?”
“No, I do not, or we would be in our car, waiting.”
“Do you have money?”
Skinner says her landlord, Levi Wilhelm, lives next door.
In the footage, lights are on in the house and cars are in the driveway.
But there is no response when officers knock on his door.
“It’s gonna be on her,” one of the police officers says to his partner.
“So what do we do now?”
Skinner says, her voice breaking.
“It’s not right.
It’s not fair.”
“Do you have any friends?”
“I don’t have anybody here,” she says, wiping tears from her cheek.
Then the officers think better of her breaking in, expressing concern that Wilhelm could return and become violent.
Records show the incident was closed that same night without a police report.
Wilhelm filed an eviction with the courts 10 days later.
He did not respond to calls and emails requesting comment.
In bodycam footage of another lockout call four months earlier, a different pair of officers respond.
The Las Vegas Metro Police declined to comment.
“There are punishments on paper, but in reality, they’re being ignored.”
Training failures
BI found training for police officers on how to respond to a lockout is spotty.
Some departments, such as Miami’s, said they didn’t have any training materials on lockouts.
Other departments effectively direct cops to turn a blind eye.
The Atlanta police declined an interview request, directing BI to the county marshal.
“One of our roles is to confirm that people are protected in their homes,” he said.
It could be any key in of crime."
In a subsequent email, Sgt.
Jenny Chavez said the department referred callers complaining of lockouts to the county constable.
In at least one case, police training openly undercuts state law-enforcement directives.
A spokesperson for California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, did not make him available for an interview.
The LAPD declined to comment on its training bulletin in light of the AG’s guidance.
Only one department, in Jersey City, turned over training materials that detail how to enforce lockout laws.
That is not the case."
State law in New Jersey establishes that even a landlord’s verbal threats can be criminal.
Even within states, definitions vary on what constitutes an illegal eviction.
A 2006 bill that would have defined illegal lockouts for all Illinois residents was defeated.
Texas has a uniquely complex statute on the books that prohibits lockouts only under very particular circumstances.
After a legal lockout, Texas landlords must provide the new key upon request.
“That other states don’t allow this or that doesn’t get you very far in Texas.”
The act reflected a pandemic-era recognition of how important it was to public health to keep people housed.
But it stalled in committee.
A year later, an effort led by Senate DemocratMichael Bennetto fund data collection on lockouts similarly stalled.
The CFPB also declined to comment.
Kelly, Minnesota’s assistant attorney general, said state AGs could step up in enforcing tenant laws.
“Every state has the authority to protect consumers,” she said.
Other tenant advocates said guaranteeing the right to counsel would help tenants assert their rights.
