Rep. Beth Bernstein, D-Columbia, looks at Rep. David Martin, R-Fort Mill, during a panel hearing on eviction records in Columbia, South Carolina on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (Photo by Adrian Ashford/SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — Legislation removing evictions from public access after five years advanced unanimously Tuesday in the South Carolina House.
Rep. Carla Schuessler, R-Myrtle Beach, said she introduced the bill last year after hearing from South Carolinians that old eviction records kept them from finding housing.
That was the case for 19-year-old Mikel Burns of Huger, who told a House Judiciary panel Tuesday that his family was forced out of their Berkeley County home in 2018 after they tried to get basic repairs done. Their house had no insulation, damaged air ducts, and little protection from cold or hot weather.
When the family tried to fix those issues, their landlord initiated eviction proceedings, Burns told the panel. The family couldn’t afford to fight that in court, so they agreed to leave voluntarily within only two days.
“That one housing crisis uprooted my childhood and pushed my family into years of instability,” Burns said.
The family couldn’t find housing and had to share a three-bedroom mobile home among 11 people. The close quarters made it hard to sleep, and Burns said he struggled to concentrate in school and developed anxiety.
“Still, years later, that filing stays on their record, and this law would change that reality,” he said, referring to his parents.
SC bill would wipe eviction records clean. Advocates say it could help people find housing.
As amended Tuesday, the bill would require the removal of eviction records from the public index, a searchable database, and from “any publicly accessible files available for public record” after five years. Those five years would be counted from the last filing, if a person’s eviction was never finalized, or from the date it was finalized.
As introduced, the bill would have required the removal after 30 days of any eviction filings that don’t actually result in a court order telling the tenant to get out. But the panel removed that provision.
The bill sent to the full House Judiciary Committee stands out in the GOP supermajority chamber as a proposal with nearly equal support from both parties.
Ten Republicans and nine Democrats have signed on to Schuessler’s bill. Co-sponsors included three of the panel’s five legislators.
“It’s exciting to have been sitting at a table with all different sides, and everyone working together for a common goal,” said Schuessler, a Republican in one of the fastest-growing parts of the nation’s fastest-growing state, by percentage.
All 13 people who testified Tuesday spoke in favor of the bill.
“This is one of the best crowds of testimony that I’ve heard in my opportunity to be here,” said Rep. David Martin, R-Fort Mill, who was elected in 2024.
He cheered that people with a range of vantage points on evictions, from people who’d faced eviction to property managers who screen tenants, showed up to support the legislation.
Meredith Oh, who lives in Greenville and works as the property manager in charge for JR Consolidated, told legislators that her livelihood depends on her ability to screen potential tenants, but she supported the bill.
A candidate’s income, credit score, and past landlords tell her a lot more about whether they’ll pay their rent than something that happened five years ago, she said.
She also said people can misunderstand the circumstances in which a landlord will use an eviction filing.
“Many landlords utilize the eviction as leverage to collect unpaid rent stemming from isolated and often uncontrollable events, such as a car breaking down, a sick child, or something as simple as receiving your Social Security check the third week of the month instead of the first,” she said.
In many cases, they’re not actually planning to evict the tenant, she said.
Black renters are more likely to face eviction, said Jordan Thompson, a community organizer at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund who is based in Washington, D.C.
In 2018, South Carolina seemed to have one of the highest rates of eviction filings in the country, with about 23 of every 100 renters faced with eviction threats, according to the most recently available state-wide data from the Eviction Lab at Princeton University.
It’s hard to compare evictions, however, because states and counties handle them differently, Stateline reported in August 2024.
And, as Oh told legislators, eviction filings in South Carolina don’t necessarily mean those tenants were actually evicted.
The Princeton data suggested that in 2018, there were about 7.8 evictions filed nationwide for every 100 renter households in the United States.
Courtesy of South Carolina Daily Gazette
