Property owners slam eviction ban
Janey, running to keep her job, follows in the footsteps of neighboring cities like Cambridge, Somerville and Malden.
Some property owners are slamming Acting Mayor Kim Janey’s eviction moratorium in Boston as being an “irresponsible” move.
The Small Property Owners Association said a ban — with a national one already overturned by the Supreme Court — “will do little to solve the challenge of keeping tenants in their housing and will continue to unfairly burden rental housing providers.”
Janey, running to keep her job, follows in the footsteps of neighboring cities like Cambridge, Somerville and Malden.
“This moratorium will block evictions and keep our neighborhoods strong as we face the delta variant together,” Janey said in a video posted to her Twitter page Tuesday.
The moratorium will prevent property owners from evicting Boston tenants and will be administered by Janey’s chief of housing and the chief of Health and Human Services. They will also administer a new $5 million Emergency Foreclosure Prevention Fund.
It will be financed with funds from the American Rescue Plan Act and the CARES Act, and “will help cover costs related to homeownership including mortgage, insurance, and condominium fee payments,” according to a press release. More information about that program will be available next week.
The move comes a day after City Councilor and rival for the mayor’s office Andrea Campbell called on Janey to enact a moratorium. The City of Boston had distributed $19 million in rental relief to about 3,500 families, out of $50 million made allocated for this purpose in Boston, a pace the release says “(exceeds) state and national averages.”