The end of the CDC’s federal eviction moratorium, after a divided Supreme Court ruling on Thursday night, is being met with disappointment by both local advocacy groups and some landlords as well.
“For communities of color and communities like Chelsea, that were the epicenter of the pandemic, it's devastating,” Gladys Vega told GBH News. She’s the executive director of the local non-profit La Colaborativa.
“If you would have been in my office around 5:30 [Thursday night], we were literally running around looking for a mattress, placing a person in it, because they had been evicted and they didn't have a place to go to live,” Vega said. “And they were paying nine hundred dollars for this little place, and they were not able to pay the rent, so their friend opened the basement and allowed them to stay.”
Vega says for people in Chelsea, the economic hit from the pandemic has not let up.
“You know, things are not fixed,” said Vega, “and they will take years to be fixed for communities that have been devastated due to poverty, due to having people to work two or three jobs in order for them to have one decent salary.”
While the Supreme Court case was brought in part by an association of Realtors from Alabama, Doug Quattrochi, executive director of the Worcester-based trade group MassLandlords, said many smaller landlords in Massachusetts won’t be helped by the end of the moratorium eviction, and don’t see it as a win.
“If, for instance, we had a functioning Congress," Quattrochi said, "they could say, ‘You know what, a lot of people are legit impacted and people shouldn't be evicted now or really ever, it's a terrible outcome for everybody. So why don't we figure out how to prevent evictions for nonpayment, use the pandemic as an opportunity to make a permanent change to the way we provide a safety net in America?' But that conversation's so far from possible.”
Quattrochi said the lack of an effective housing safety net is a losing proposition for both tenants and landlords.
Still, Jessica Drew, a staff attorney for Greater Boston Legal Services, said the end of the federal moratorium has the potential to start a wave of evictions in Massachusetts.
And while she said the state has more aid resources than others, she sees the process of applying for rental assistance —with documentation that has to go through multiple agencies — as being too burdensome for many people to complete.
“You know, you have a family that's in crisis, maybe they're dealing with COVID and the impending eviction and trying to get their kids to school,” Drew said. “And now on top of that, they're having to apply for rental assistance and provide all these documents, and that's a challenge in itself.”
Gov. Charlie Baker has been focusing on rental assistance since he let a previous state eviction moratorium expire last October.
A bill in the state legislature would revive that state moratorium, but Drew says she has her doubts about whether Baker would sign such a bill.
Drew adds that evictions are the biggest cause of homelessness.
"Eviction causes a cascade of problems — health problems, social problems, mental health concerns," Drew said. "I mean, it's just a crisis all around. If you don't have stable housing, you can't get a job. Where do you go to school? Where do you bring your kids? It's disastrous. It has disastrous consequences."
