During the second week of January, when a once-in-a-decade storm brought nearly 10 inches of snow to Louisville, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office performed 23 set-outs. That’s when a sheriff’s deputy and a landlord show up to a rental unit to forcefully repossess it. Landlords usually show up with movers ready to put a tenant's property out on the curb.
Andrew Chandler, a housing attorney with the Legal Aid Society, which represents people facing evictions, said he wasn’t surprised to hear that tenants are being kicked out during severe winter weather. Kentucky courts don’t consider a person’s risk of homelessness in frigid temperatures or that a tenant may struggle to move out to be acceptable legal arguments, he said.
“I’ve had clients who are like, ‘Can I just tell the judge that I don’t have any place to go?” he said. “In a just world, that would be the kind of thing you could say and it would make a difference in what the judge does, but that’s not the reality here.”
The Sheriff’s Office did not carry out evictions on Jan. 6 and 7 during heavy snowfall. But deputies were back to carrying out evictions on Jan. 8, when many businesses and government agencies were still closed and neighborhood streets were impassable.
Lt. Col. Carl Yates, the agency’s spokesperson, said the decision to pause evictions for two days was mainly due to staffing shortages at the Sheriff’s Office, exacerbated by the storm.
“We had a skeleton crew on,” Yates said. “It was so bad the decision was made that we don’t have enough people, so we’ll go ahead and cancel those two days.”
Not only did the Sheriff’s Office feel it was a safety issue, he said landlords also struggled to get their moving crews out to the properties.
Yates said the Sheriff’s Office is often made out to be the bad guy when it comes to evictions, but it’s “not one of the things we ravish doing.” He said the agency has a constitutional obligation to carry out the eviction warrants issued by the courts. That was the reason he gave for why they resumed set-outs on Jan. 8, even when the weather continued to pose challenges.
“We have a constitutional responsibility on those court orders to do the best we can,” Yates said, “So, we did.”
He added that deputies try to help tenants who have nowhere else to go. He said they offer people information about emergency shelters and other support services.
The week after the storm, when temperatures dipped below freezing each night and snow and ice lingered on the sidewalks and streets, deputies and landlords evicted tenants from 45 more homes, according to data provided by the Sheriff’s Office.
Kevin Trager, a spokesperson for Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg, said in a statement that the Greenberg administration thinks dangerous weather conditions warrant a pause.
“We do not believe people should be evicted during a severe weather event, such as the snowstorm Louisville experienced earlier this month,” he said.
Trager said any pause in evictions is ultimately at the discretion of the Sheriff’s Office.
That agency, though, doesn’t believe it has the power to make decisions about pausing evictions during severe winter weather. Lt. Col. Yates said it’s a question for the courts and lawmakers.
“Landlords turn to the courts, really, not us,” he said. “On all the court papers we serve, it doesn’t say, ‘If you want to do this, OK. If you don’t, it’s alright.’ It says, ‘You shall do this.’”
Few cities have passed legislation pausing evictions during the winter months or when severe weather strikes. In Cook County, Illinois., which includes Chicago, deputies cannot perform evictions during the holidays, Dec. 16 through Jan. 6, or and any day when temperatures are 15 degrees or colder.
In the first two weeks of 2025, courts issued 88 eviction warrants for people living in Jefferson County. Each warrant asks the Sheriff's Office to follow through on the set out “ASAP.”
If that pace continues, dozens more people in Louisville could be evicted in the remaining month and a half of winter.
Services stretched thin during severe weather
Forcing people to vacate their apartments or homes during severe weather can put them at acute risk.
Chandler, the housing attorney, said the recent snow storm put one of his clients in “a difficult position.” She had already reached a settlement to vacate, but she was unable to remove larger items from the property, like a trampoline and dog house.
“They can’t really get a U-Haul on their street because it’s not been cleared,” he said. “The net effect is that she’s faced with a decision now of either abandoning those items to get the eviction case dismissed … or, if the landlord refuses to allow more time, then she’s going to have to accept an eviction on her record.”
People who don’t have another place to stay — either short term or permanently — can face the prospect of being homeless during frigid temperatures.
The winter months put a strain on housing services in Louisville, where shelter beds are limited and getting to them in bad weather can be impossible.
Catherine McGeeney, director of communications at the Coalition for the Homeless, said emergency shelter beds have been full or mostly full almost every night in recent weeks. During what providers call “white flag” events, when wind chills are below 35 degrees, shelters like Wayside Christian Mission can provide chairs or cots for people.
“This really isn't the same as having a shelter bed; it's a life-saving tactic in congregate settings during extreme weather only,” McGeeney said.
So far this year in Louisville, most of the more than five dozen set-outs took place in extreme weather conditions. They happen at the end of an eviction process that can take months.
After a tenant has an eviction judgment issued against them, the landlord can request an eviction warrant to get the Sheriff's Office to perform a set-out. Tenants typically have about six weeks after that to leave voluntarily.
Chandler said eviction court is carried out “with such a distance” from the circumstances of tenants. Lawyers often appear via Zoom and some landlords initiating set-outs don’t even live in Kentucky.
“I don’t see how someone in Denver or Santa Monica or New York is supposed to be concerned about the winter weather in Louisville,” he said.
Chandler said it wasn’t too long ago that cities across the U.S. paused evictions because of the impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on employment and government agencies.
“It’s not difficult to imagine that there could be such a temporary thing as a moratorium in emergencies like the winter,” he said.
