Pittsburgh housing authority eviction cases hit speed bumps in North Side courtroom

Long before he joined Pennsylvania’s minor judiciary, Jehosha Wright saw firsthand that some magistrates take a by-the-book approach to cases.“When I first ran into the district judge position or understood the role, at least a little bit, it was when I wasn’t going to [high] school,” Jehosha Wright said in a 2021 interview, when he was running for district judge. “When you don’t go to school, for truancy, you go see this district judge and it depends on who you get, what type of results you get. In my case when I went to go see the district judge, it was more of an open-and-shut type of thing.”Wright’s own style was anything but open-and-shut in August and September as he heard eviction cases filed by the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh [HACP] against tenants.Wright has been one of at least four district judges experiencing unusually high numbers of landlord-tenant cases — which can end in evictions — filed by the authority. Many of the tenants facing eviction racked up thousands of dollars in overdue rent, according to court filings.On the morning of Aug. 5, Wright called each tenant into his East Allegheny courtroom, where they were met by...