Philly sheriff wants to double staff for eviction duties

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Philadelphia Sheriff Rochelle Bilal wants to more than double the size of her office’s eviction unit, a budget request aimed at clearing a sizable backlog of cases and keeping pace with new ones.

The office currently has eight to 12 detectives assigned to perform eviction operations each day, including lockouts. To meet the demand, Bilal hopes to hire another 14 detectives as part of a broader push to increase headcount across the office, which also staffs courtrooms, transports prisoners and manages sheriff sales.

“We need staffing,” Bilal told City Council during a budget hearing this week. “We need funding.”

Her request is rooted in recent history.

More than a year ago, the sheriff’s office became the sole entity responsible for conducting evictions in Philadelphia. The shift substantially increased the workload of the eviction unit, prompting Bilal’s effort to add capacity.

The sheriff’s office previously conducted only some evictions. The vast majority of them were completed by armed contractors hired by the Landlord and Tenant Office, a private outfit led by a court-appointed attorney. That stopped in late 2024 when the LTO shut down, the direct result of two tenants being shot by deputy landlord-tenant officers attempting to evict them.

During this week’s budget hearing, Chief Inspector David Fallen said, for several months after the transition, the sheriff’s unit was bringing in cases more quickly than it could schedule evictions, in part because it had inherited thousands of cases from the LTO.

The unit went from scheduling about 25 evictions a week to more than 140, an uptick that has routinely required overtime hours, according to a spokesperson.

Fallen said the office is “about to turn the corner” when it comes to staying on top of the new cases coming into the office now.

“We just have to work to reduce what’s behind,” Fallen said.