Marla Castro is grateful to have an apartment in Chelsea, but she’s desperate to leave it.
In recent years, Castro says she’s endured constant problems that her landlord has been slow to fix. She slept on an air mattress in her living room for several months as her bedroom walls crumbled from water damage and mold. Her ceiling also has leaked and peeled, she’s woken up to find mice droppings and she believes roach infestations have caused one of her daughters’ allergic reactions.
“She would break out in hives. She was always itching, and I’m always mopping and bleaching,” Castro said. “To sit here and you’re watching TV, and you just see roaches crawl from those ceilings ... they were everywhere.”
Castro has been stuck, unable to afford another two-bedroom apartment. Late last year, she stopped making rent payments to pressure her landlord to fix the problems. But although state law permits tenants to withhold some rent if their apartment isn’t in a habitable condition, Castro’s landlord responded with an eviction notice. She immediately panicked that she would be kicked out before finding a new place.
“It was retaliation,” Castro said. “It scared me to think that I’m going to be out in the street with my kids.”
GBH News has followed Castro throughout this year as she’s continued to navigate problems with her apartment and fight the eviction. Her experience exemplifies an overlooked result of Massachusetts’ housing shortage that can leave tenants feeling powerless.
With affordable apartments in high demand across the state, housing experts say many renters have to settle for shoddy living conditions because landlords aren’t maintaining their units — and tenants have nowhere else to go. And although state law is supposed to shield renters like Castro from substandard housing and retaliation, housing advocates say the protections often don’t do much.
“Some of these apartments — you wouldn’t normally accept an apartment in that state,” Worcester City Councilor Etel Haxhiaj said. “It’s devaluing humans and people to offer them housing that you, yourself as a landlord or as someone who oversees a property, wouldn’t want to live in.”
A housing market with few options
Michael Moriarty, executive director of One Holyoke — a nonprofit that operates affordable housing in Western Massachusetts — noted that with insurance premiums and the cost of building materials elevated, some landlords may not be able to afford necessary rehab work. Greg Vasil, CEO of the Greater Boston Real Estate Board, added that problems will always arise with apartments no matter how responsive a landlord is.
He said normally, landlords have strong incentives to maintain their apartments. If they don’t, their property will lose value and they risk costlier fixes if problems persist. Tenants also won’t rent the apartment when there are others in better condition for the same price.
But the housing market falters when demand continuously exceeds supply. Rents increase, and many tenants lose their ability “to vote with their feet,” said Jenny Schuetz, an urban economist at the Brookings Institution. Suddenly, apartment owners hold more leverage, and some start taking advantage of lower-income renters.
“Landlords can get away with being not very responsive, providing poor-quality housing and still raising the rent on you if they know that you have no place else to go,” Schuetz said.
Vasil noted he’s come across dilapidated units, and he’s not surprised some landlords are letting their tenants live in inadequate conditions.
“There are abuses out there,” he said. “That’s not acceptable.”
“Landlords can get away with being not very responsive, providing poor quality housing and still raising the rent on you if they know that you have no place else to go.”Jenny Schuetz, economist at the Brookings Institute
It doesn’t help that Massachusetts’ housing stock is some of the oldest in the country and many residential buildings were constructed in ways that now make them fire hazards. Schuetz said the poor living conditions can have long-lasting impacts on families, including respiratory and developmental problems for children.
“It’s pretty hard to focus on doing your homework and performing well in school when you’re living in a house that doesn’t have working heat or air conditioning or that has infestation problems,” she said.
State protections that aren’t always sufficient
Massachusetts’ sanitary code mandates that landlords keep dwellings free of rodents and roaches and maintain the structure, from walls and ceilings to roofs and chimneys. If tenants believe there are violations, they can complain to their local health or inspectional services departments, which can fine the landlord until they fix the problem.
But housing advocates say many renters either don’t know their rights or fear that, if they complain, their landlords will retaliate with an eviction or rent hike. Isaac Simon Hodes, who leads the renter advocacy organization Lynn United for Change, noted many tenants dealing with poor living conditions don’t speak English and are undocumented. He remembered one landlord threatening to call immigration authorities on a family that was complaining about conditions.
“And then, what do you know, [Immigrations and Customs Enforcement] shows up and takes one of the tenants into custody. … It’s like, ‘Shut up, or I’m going to have you deported,’” Simon Hodes said.
Castro, the Chelsea renter, is a Massachusetts native and hasn’t had to worry about immigration authorities. But when she received the eviction notice earlier this year for withholding rent, she feared it would stain her record and make it hard to find another apartment.
At the time, the walls in her bedroom were covered with plaster — the result of three years of her landlord, Broadway Capital, patching and never sanding or painting, Castro said. She couldn’t sleep in the room because cold air would seep through holes in her walls, overpowering her heater. Whenever she complained, the property manager responded that he would get to it.
“All I wanted was to fix this,” she said in April. “It’s like, ‘Dude, if you’re not doing what you’re supposed to do as a landlord, what do you think I’m gonna do? Just sit here and twiddle my thumbs?’”
Castro found a lawyer and spent the next few months fighting the eviction. Even though Broadway Capital ultimately repaired her bedroom walls, she kept withholding rent because she believed mold still existed within them. The room continued to smell musty, and a moisture-scanning device she regularly inserted into the walls indicated the wood was still damp.
Finally in July, Castro and her lawyer arrived at Chelsea’s courthouse prepared for a trial that could determine whether the eviction would proceed and Castro would have to pay back some of the withheld rent. But just before the judge was about to hear the case, Castro’s lawyer and the one representing the landlord reached a deal: Broadway Capital would forgive all $12,000 in rent as long as she agreed to move out within six months.
“I feel relieved,” she said after hearing about the settlement. “I can breathe. I’m iffy about how they’re going to treat me from here on out. Six months is a long time. And obviously, I’m trying to move out faster than that.”
Castro believed the state housing protections ultimately helped convince Broadway Capital to settle. But she said the deal wouldn’t have been possible if she wasn’t aware of her rights and didn’t fight back.
In an interview, Broadway Capital’s owner, Mikael Vienneau, said his property management team should have responded better to the issues with Castro’s apartment, which is why he forgave the missed rent. He said he’s made changes to his staff to ensure similar problems don’t happen again.
Vinneau added that Castro’s building had a lot of problems when the company bought it in 2021, and they’ve since spent over $200,000 on renovations.
“We want our tenants obviously to live in a safe environment,” he said.
Possible short-term solutions
State and local officials agree that the tight housing market leaves many tenants with few housing options and little leverage over conditions. A spokesperson for the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities pointed to the recently signed Affordable Homes Act as a way the state’s trying to respond.
The measure will establish an Office of Fair Housing to bolster tenant protections and expand education initiatives. The act also seeks to address the housing shortage by allocating $5 billion to create thousands of new homes and help landlords upgrade many existing ones.
Localities around Massachusetts have been considering other ways to address poor living conditions, including strengthening apartment inspection processes so that they’re not prompted solely by complaints from tenants.
Earlier this year, Amherst modified its system to require all apartment units be inspected at least once every five years. Worcester had a similar process, but then, amid pushback from landlords, altered the program this summer to exempt all two- and three-family owner-occupied rental properties from inspections.
Chelsea’s inspection program goes further. In addition to an inspection at least every five years, the city requires one each time an apartment changes tenants. Officials said they monitor rental listings online to ensure landlords are notifying them when units turn over to new renters. They also hold monthly meetings to discuss properties that continue to violate the housing code.
“It is very labor intensive,” Chelsea City Manager Fidel Maltez said, noting that Chelsea has a significant immigrant population. “I am committed to ensuring that we protect our residents.”
