HAMILTON, Ohio — On the whiteboard inside Felix Russo’s office, there’s a list of names. Above those names is another word: “deceased.”
Russo used to keep a picture of all the people who have died that he’s worked with at New Life Mission, but he ran out of room.
“It’s frustrating,” Russo said.
The pastor runs a food pantry in Hamilton. His team serves lunch four days a week and tries to bring resources to the people experiencing homelessness they often work with.
On this day, he’s frustrated with another organization that says its goal is to help those same people. Because one of the women who regularly eats at his food pantry is being evicted by Serve City — an emergency shelter in Butler County.
“We stand at the front door and say we’re in a homeless crisis while we’re evicting people out the back door,” Russo said. “And that troubles me. We have to come up with better solutions.”
Hear directly from Serve City's executive director in the video below:
In February, Serve City filed eviction orders for six people. That’s as many as the shelter filed all of last year, according to a WCPO 9 News review of court records.
“I’ve never been late on my rent. I’ve never done anything wrong,” one resident said in Hamilton Municipal Court last week. “There’s nothing right about that.”
Legal experts tell us it appears there is nothing illegal about what the shelter is doing. Instead, the eviction cases raise bigger questions about how we treat people experiencing homelessness, said Lori Elliott, managing attorney for Legal Aid Society of Southwest Ohio.
Elliott was in the courtroom last week while the Serve City cases played out.
“It’s not that these people don’t want to move, it’s that there’s nowhere else to go,” Elliott said. “I would like to see more compassion. It just doesn’t seem right.”
We took these concerns to the executive director of Serve City. Tammi Ector said the people being evicted are living in housing that was meant to be temporary — except they’ve been there for years.
“It breaks our heart,” Ector said. "Because we tried to help."
The director says she's been working on helping people move since she started at the shelter in 2023. The evictions will allow her organization to offer permanent housing vouchers, she said, which the residents being evicted do not qualify for.
“This was never meant to be your forever home,” Ector said. “I have looked individuals in the eyes and said, ‘Please, we have to do this.’”
She told us her organization relies on federal housing guidelines for public housing, and the apartments in question were always meant to be temporary solutions. She said officials haven't collected rent from these people since December, hoping they could use the money for a deposit somewhere else.
"They have adamantly refused to take the help that has been offered," Ector said.
In court, Russo stepped up to speak on behalf of one of those residents, someone he said has severe mental health conditions. Instead, the magistrate continued all pending Serve City eviction cases until March 19, asking the nonprofit for more documentation on the federal guidelines and its reasoning for the evictions.
Outside the courtroom, Russo said he is relieved to have a little more time. But he's still frustrated.
“I feel like they could have done more,” Russo said. “I think that’s wrong.”
