Eviction ban imperils affordable housing
Banning evictions is a plum issue among the candidates for Boston mayor. Nothing says “I stand with the people” more than siding with renters over landlords in calling for a continued halt in evictions over failure to pay one’s rent.
When the moratorium was declared at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, it made sense. Businesses were shuttered, jobs were lost, streets were empty, paychecks gone. While we seem to be making two-steps-forward-onestep-back progress toward taming COVID, the landscape has changed. Restaurants are open, games are back at Fenway, movies can be seen in theaters, and “hiring” signs once again hang in windows.
But the eviction moratorium remains in Boston, extended by Acting Mayor Kim Janey.
As the Herald’s Erin Tiernan reported, Janey recounted her experience growing up in subsidized housing and living in a homeless shelter during a Sunday appearance on WCVB’s “On the Record.”
“I’ve experienced housing insecurity as a child and young adult. I grew up in subsidized housing here in the city of Boston — even spent time in a shelter for women and children.” She said her eviction ban and a $5 million bump in foreclosure prevention funding is designed to “protect residents” from losing their homes amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Protecting landlords? Not so much.
They are the mustache-twirling villains in the scenario, the deeppocketed Scrooges who live to squeeze the little guy — or so the progressives would have one believe.
They are people, trying to make a living, and suffering through the pandemic like everyone else.
Paulette Houston, who rents out a three-bedroom apartment in her two-family Roxbury home, told the Herald’s Amy Sokolow, “There’s all kinds of articles about the tenants who are about to be homeless. You know, if they don’t pay their rent, I’m gonna be homeless.”
Houston said landlords look may like “the bad guys” in the media but, “it’s not true.”
But even if leaders kick the moratorium can down the road for months at a stretch, the question of its impact on the future of affordable housing can’t be ignored.
As CNBC reported, “each passing month further escalates the risk of losing an ever-increasing amount of rental housing, ultimately jeopardizing the availability of safe, sustainable and affordable housing for all Americans,” wrote Bob Pinnegar, CEO of the National Apartment Association, in a release. “Flawed eviction moratoriums leave renters with insurmountable debt and housing providers holding the bag as our nation’s housing affordability crisis spirals into a housing affordability disaster.”
The longer the moratorium stretches, the likelier more landlords will go out of business.
The last thing we need is less affordable housing stock. And what will be the incentive to sell these properties to low-bidders who intend to provide affordable housing themselves? The inroads to gentrification could be months away.
For those who do hang on, or build affordable housing in the future — the message is loud and clear that the city doesn’t have your back — so why take chances? Tenants with “riskier” credit might have gotten approval in the past, given their circumstances and need, but landlords may well view the eviction moratorium as a lesson: Take care of yourself, no one else will.