So without going into too much detail, the Ritz-Carlton House was illegally evicted this morning.
Back in February we recieved an arbitrary 24-hour eviction notice on behalf of Orlando National Bank (one of two banks that are currently in the process of foreclosing the house). ONB deals mostly with commercial properties, and clearly didn't understand which laws are applicable in residential cases (especially those, like ours, that involve formerly paying tenants). Jackie and Alan took this to court the same day and were able to bag us a court order that essentially barred ONB from pursuing a "writ of possession" (eviction) until after april 1st, on the grounds that there were two banks foreclosing on the property (ONB did not hold all the interest involved), and that in residential cases, people are entitled to more than 24 hours notice to move their whole lives out and at least find some place to stay. Since this we've been house-hunting with a couple promising leads in the near future, however, we haven't yet secured a house.
Fast forward to March 24th: we recieved another 24-hour eviction notice (taped to our door, contradictingly immediately next to our court order). The court order said ONB were prohibited from going forward with a writ of possession until after april 1st, the notice was titled "writ of possession" and dated "March 23rd" - seemed like a no-brainer, but this is the sheriff's department and a commercial holdings bank we're talking about. Fearing the worst, we moved as much as we could out as quickly as possible (especially considering that our day to move happened to be a wednesday, Food not Bombs day).
Last night, after having worked all day moving shit around (all my stuff to my van (parked behind ethos), coop bikes to furöche's, tools, benches, etc. to erics, coop wheels and tires to allison/victoria/stevea's) and not looking forward to working bright and early in the morning, myself, birdie, emilarry, derek, jake, sam, and 3 new traveller bros who were staying at our house and showing us a good time porched it one last time and drank some brewskeys.
I hit the hay early to get some sleep, with nothing but my soon-to-be abandoned bed in my room only to be woken up by a sheriff's car parked our front shining lights in the windows. We decided to barricade the two back doors (of which, neither have knobs/locks) with furniture and appliances and lock up the front door. I also wrote out a note on the door explaining how the eviction was illegal and that OCSD could be held in contempt of court for violating the court order, as well as highlighted the specific passage that was applicable in this situation. I fell asleep again only to be woken up again at 9 AM by someone pounding on the front door yelling "Sheriff's Department, Open UP!"
I opened up.
"so listen, we read your note and that court order only applies to the first notice you all got," a cop/woman said. I argued that the new notice was in fact a "writ of possession" (as evidenced by the first line of the paper) and that it was literally a photocopy of the last, which prompted such an emergency order, and that the situation hadn't changed and that people need more than 24-hours notice to move out (especially when you work full time like I do).
"nope that's wrong," she said (fucking pig dumbass) "you need to get everyone out of the house. we'll move everything inside out to the curb and you can rummage through it then (good luck btw) if others haven't gotten to it first." as a smirk cracked its way across her swinelike ugly mug.
We all got out and they boarded up and changed the locks (i really wish we followed through with our idea of just taking the doors off and getting rid of them. All the books were inside, as with the insurance info for the truck and the 501(c)3 info for food not bombs. great.
may the shitstorm ensue upon their households.
ryan!
p.s. I wanted so badly for one of their hired help to say anything about how much work it'd be to move all the shit out of the house. I'd've said:
"i don't feel bad for you, you kick people out of their homes and then go home to your homes."
ACAB
SQUAT THE FUCKING STATE
EDIT:
And now after checking my bank account i was hit with two $35 "penalties" which put me at negative duckets. GREEEATTTT
ryan!
