The eviction that sits on Timika Fields’ record has left her family in what feels like a never-ending spiral.
She’s been taking her two kids to her mom’s house, then their grandparents’ house, then a hotel — anywhere they can exist for a little bit at a time. They’ve been doing that for about a year now.
At this point, Fields said money isn’t the issue. She works as a server and could make rent. But the eviction is attached to her name, and it’s hard to escape that.
“As soon as they see that eviction, they deny you,” she said.
Fields, 30, is trying to shed this burden.
She went to an eviction sealing clinic on Aug. 26 at an eastside Eskenazi Health campus. There, volunteer advocates and attorneys worked with nearly 100 people to see if their evictions were eligible to be expunged.
Some cases were straightforward.
If they didn’t owe money to the landlord and a judge had dismissed the case, they could file a petition to have their eviction sealed so it doesn’t show up in public searches.
Then there are cases like Fields’, whose experience demonstrates how convoluted an eviction can be. Even years later, it can continue to weigh people down as they try to move on with their lives.
‘That’s been so long ago’
Fields sat at a small, rectangular table with a stack of papers and a gas station fountain drink in front of her.
Across from her was Macey Miller, a volunteer attorney who spent her day sifting through court records to pull up details about each case.
It was 11:40 in the morning. Miller tapped away at her keyboard, and Fields scrolled through her phone.
“Do you have a case number?” Miller asked.
Fields didn’t. “That’s been so long ago,” she said.
At the time of her eviction, Fields was working as a certified nursing assistant. She was pregnant with her second child, and her doctor recommended she stay off of her feet. So she stopped working more than a month before she gave birth.
The paychecks stopped, but rent kept coming due.
It didn’t take long for Fields to fall behind. Her landlord filed for an eviction.
Court records show Fields still owes more than $3,000 on the case. That means it isn’t eligible to be sealed, but she’s working with an attorney to take a closer look and figure out how to get the case off of her record.
If that day comes, Fields knows what will come next.
She wants a stable place to live, where her 10-year-old and 5-year-old can run around.
“I want to be able to give my kids a backyard,” she said.
‘People are constantly facing struggles’
That backyard dream will have to wait while Fields works with an attorney to comb through her case.
The Aug. 26 event was the first eviction sealing clinic at Eskenazi Health, which has a program to help patients manage civil legal issues that affect their health.
Anna Kirkman, associate chief counsel at Eskenazi, leads the Medical-Legal Partnership and said about a third of cases are related to housing.
“People are constantly facing struggles with housing stability, evictions, habitability issues,” she said.
Volunteers helped 96 people at the clinic, with about 225 eviction sealing petitions filed, according to an Eskenazi spokeswoman.
From a health center’s perspective, helping people get their evictions sealed can have a downstream effect that goes beyond housing.
Because finding a safe and stable place to live, Kirkman said, eventually can lead to better health outcomes.
Stable housing also can help people find a sense of community.
That’s part of what Fields is searching for — not just for herself, but for her children.
“That’s the only thing that I’m not able to say, that I provide for them on my own,” she said before leaving.
Mirror Indy reporter Tyler Fenwick covers housing and labor. Contact him at 317-766-1406 or tyler.fenwick@mirrorindy.org. Follow him on X @ty_fenwick.
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