NORFOLK — A company that operates private, off-campus rental properties for Old Dominion University students and Norfolk’s public housing authority were the city’s two biggest evictors in 2024, according to new data and analysis from the Equity Center at the University of Virginia.
Norfolk was one of the top five Virginia cities with the most eviction filings in 2024, even though the amount of filings fell compared to 2023. Eviction filings against Norfolk rental tenants in 2024 declined about 8.1%, from 10,096 to 9,275, compared to the previous year, according to Norfolk court data analyzed by the Equity Center.
Only landlords in Richmond, Henrico County, Newport News and Virginia Beach filed more cases during the past 12 months, according to analysis from Princeton University’s Eviction Lab.
Not every eviction filing leads to an eviction decision by a judge. Eviction judgements for 2024 in Norfolk declined about 8%, from 4,995 to 4,571, compared to 2023. And some of the evictions filings are against the same tenants in what are called serial filings.
According to the Equity Center data, the top eviction filers in Norfolk for 2024 include:
- Polizos Properties LLC, which does business as ODUrent, with 506 cases filed. 259 filings resulted in eviction judgements and 219 were serial filings.
- The Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority, with 492 cases filed. 190 filings resulted in eviction judgements and 181 were serial filings.
- Arbor Pointe Apartments LLC, with 222 cases filed. 125 filings resulted in eviction judgements and 89 were serial filings.
ODUrent is a real estate and property management company that specializes in off-campus student housing for Old Dominion University students and is not affiliated with the university. The company has never evicted a resident that paid rent on time “unless they posed a threat to individuals or property,” according to statement from Polizos Properties.
Additionally, the company said evictions are a last resort and it attempts to avoid them through early intervention programs like multiple notices and supplying information on financial assistance like aid programs, loans and grants.
ODUrent representative Maxine Brown said the company’s internal statistics registered 96 evictions in 2024, which is fewer than 6% of all ODUrent tenants. She said the number might be lower than the number of eviction judgements because some tenants may have paid after the judgement.
Michele Claibourn, director of equitable analysis at the Equity Center, agreed that an eviction judgement does not always equal a forced displacement because the landlord and tenant can reach an agreement.
“At the same time, people can feel forced to leave without an explicit eviction judgment in response to an eviction filing (or even informally, before an unlawful detainer case is filed),” Claibourn wrote in an email.
As a government agency, rather than a private company, the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority’s inclusion on the list is notable, said Alex Fella, a housing researcher and professor at Tidewater Community College who recently published an analysis of regional eviction trends.
“How is the public housing authority, ostensibly a social good, sharing some of the top spots with a real estate investment firm in terms of evictions in the city?” Fella said, referencing other companies with properties in Hampton Roads.
For 2024, Norfolk’s housing authority also filed significantly more eviction cases than other Hampton Roads housing authorities — almost twice as many as the next highest city. During the same time period, Newport News filed 166 eviction cases, Portsmouth filed 55, Chesapeake filed 67, Hampton filed 47 and Suffolk filed 32, according to the Equity Center data. Virginia Beach does not have public housing. Norfolk’s housing authority filing number includes filings from Norfolk RHA, NRHA and NRHA Mission College Limited Partnership. Mission College is an apartment property financed in part by the housing authority.
Nathan Simms, NRHA executive director, declined to be interviewed for this article.
However, Simms told WHRO in January that the agency had suspended evictions of tenants beginning in November in order to make sure paperwork aligned and the agency was making the best attempts to reach households in danger of eviction. He also could not say why the eviction number was so much higher than other cities.
After a Feb. 13 housing authority board meeting, Simms told The Pilot that the process was still suspended.
Other factors complicate a true list of top evictors in any given city, Fella said. For example, he said Arbor Pointe is owned by Seminole Trail Management, a real estate company with apartments across Hampton Roads. So, if you added up the 222 evictions cases filed in 2024 by Arbor Pointe Apartments LLC and the 113 more filed by Seminole-owned Sewells Park Apartments, the company actually filed a total of 335 evictions in Norfolk.
Seminole did not respond to requests for comment.
High eviction rates have been a longtime issue for Norfolk and other Hampton Roads cities. An Eviction Lab report revealed all Hampton Roads cities saw judges order tenants out of their homes at least three times the average national rate in 2016. According to analysis by Fella, evictions in the region declined in 2020 and 2021 due to protections put in place after the coronavirus pandemic, but rose again in 2022 and 2023 as those protections expired.
Trevor Metcalfe, 757-222-5345, [email protected]