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Renters whose landlords are in foreclosure will get to stay in their homes at least a little longer, thanks to a move by Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart that will help people at the eleventh hour in the eviction process: A partial moratorium on sheriff’s evictions.

Dart said Wednesday that deputies won’t evict people who rent until banks can provide proof that the person living at the property has been notified of the eviction.

“When we’re doing this, and we’re destroying peoples’ lives, we’ve got to make darn sure we’ve got the right people,” Dart said.

The order does not affect most evictions, only those of people who rent and frequently first learn that their landlord’s building is being reposessed – and that they are being evicted – when deputies show up to move their furniture to the curb.

Dart said that his office receives 400-500 such eviction orders a month. All of them will be halted until affadavits from lenders are in hand.

The move comes, Dart said, in part because in about a third of the evictions, deputies went to properties only to find nobody there or people other than the mortgage holder, who were unaware of the eviction.

Although this is a significant problem, a sheriff’s spokesman said far more apartment renters are evicted for non-payment of rent than home and condo occupants.

Steve Patterson, Dart’s spokesman, said those evictions are unaffected by the moratorium.

The county projects that it will conduct 10,000 rental evictions this year, compared with 4,500 mortgage foreclosure evictions.

Dart said his deputies were doing the heavy lifting for banks. Banks need to find out who actually lives at a foreclosed property, he said. When the department informed banks that people other than the mortgage holder were at a foreclosed property, days later, Dart said, his office would get an eviction order with those new names added.

“Do due diligence, bank: Is it in fact a single-family home and that’s the person that’s named? Then we go right ahead with it.” Dart said. “All too often this person has rented it out to somebody. The court is completely unaware of it. The person in that house has paid their rent for the past two years.”

Some advocates for renters said that at least part of the impetus for Dart’s move came after the Albany Park Neighborhood Council came to Dart’s office to lobby for renters who didn’t know their landlords were in foreclosure.

Diane Limas, of the council, told reporters at the press conference that her organization worked with several tenants whose landlord fled the country with $2 million in mortgage loans.

Though the tenants had paid rent dutifully, Limas said, they discovered they were being evicted.

“Imagine these tenants opening the door and seeing four sheriff’s people there telling them they need to get out,” she said. “There were two small children in that apartment, elderly grandparent. They didn’t understand the language too well; a lot of the people that live in this building were immigrants.”

Dart did not specify a time limit for the moratorium. Once banks provide an affidavit, occupants will have 120 days before the eviction is carried out. The hope is that people will have the time to find somewhere else to live.

The sheriff said he wasn’t deterred by the prospect he might face penalties if he refused to act on eviction orders.

“I’m not just some mindless bureaucrat who stands at the table and and says, ‘That’s somebody else’s problem,’” Dart said. “This should be remedied and it can be remedied and they need to do it right now.”

One housing advocate on the Southwest Side said that although he didn’t think halting tenant eviction would significantly alter the dynamics of the foreclosure crisis, the sheriff’s decision will help tenants by giving them extra time.

“We’re glad to see that the Cook County Sheriff’s Department is slowing the process down and actually taking a look at the human impact,” said David McDowell, senior organizer with the Southwest Organizing Project, who said his organization mainly works with homeowners facing foreclosure.

Sheriff’s figures show that the number of foreclosures in Cook County has increased dramatically in the past few years, from almost 19,000 in 2006 to a projected 43,000 this year.

“We’re talking about how fast and easy the banking world was with giving out loans,” Dart said. “Is it hard to imagine that they’ve been playing a little fast and loose with who’s actually in these places? Not much of a leap here. And that’s what we’re seeing first hand.”