Landslide of evictions threatens to upend Boston’s black communities, report states

Housing advocates are calling for a yearlong extension to a coronavirus-era moratorium on evictions as researchers warn of a landslide of filings queuing in the courts that will disproportionately uproot Boston’s Black and Latino communities.

“The COVID crisis acts as an accelerator. It exposes the fault lines in our housing system,” said Lisa Owens, executive director at City Life/Vida Urbana, whose group helped produce a recent report on evictions. “This is what you get when you don’t address generations of systemic racism.”

A moratorium on evictions and foreclosures that began in April — following a spike in filings at the height of the pandemic — is slated to expire in August. Hundreds of eviction filings poured in during the seven weeks before the state enacted the temporary ban — 78% of those were in communities of color.

Luis Erazo held his 2-year-old daughter Zuleima on the steps of the two-story East Boston home he rents for his family on Sunday. They were joined by other housing advocates calling on state leaders to act to protect families like his from displacement. Erazo’s landlord evicted him in February to make way for a lucrative sale to developers, but the pandemic has allowed them to stay put so far.

“We haven’t paid the rent for June now because we aren’t working — like many people (our employers) are cutting hours,” Erazo said.

The state Housing Court anticipates 20,000 eviction cases will be filed immediately after the moratorium is lifted, but the actual number of households at risk of eviction could be much higher. A recent Metropolitan Area Planning Council report put the number at 120,000. Massachusetts Landlords Association puts the number reaching into hundreds of thousands.

City Life is working with state Reps. Mike Connolly and Kevin Honan to enact a yearlong extension of the COVID-19 era moratorium on evictions and foreclosures and along with a one year ban on no-fault evictions and rent increases. A bill that will be filed on Tuesday will also provide foreclosure protections for landlords and homeowners.

“We’re going to see an incomprehensible wave of displacement that we can’t allow to happen,” Connolly said, acknowledging the bill has an uphill battle in the five weeks before the current legislative session ends.

State Rep. David DeCoste, ranking Republican on the Joint Committee on Housing, called the initial moratorium “wise” but warned an extension would face staunch opposition from landlords and realtors.

Greg Vasil, CEO of the Greater Boston Real Estate Board said, “Filing legislation as a political stunt should be the last resort when the extent of the problem has not been fully vetted. This is the time for real leadership that balances the needs of tenants and property owners. I fear this bill is simply the former.”

Report writers warned of “a severe housing crisis that will adversely impact Boston’s communities of color” — at a time when the nation is in the grips of an uprising against the effects of institutionalized racism.

Housing affordability and rampant evictions have long been a problem in Boston, where more than 50,000 evictions happened over the past decade, the City Life report points out.

Evictions have hit Black and Latino renters hardest with 70% of market-rate eviction filings between 2014 and 2016 happening in predominantly minority neighborhoods, according to the data assembled by MIT researchers and City Life.

The highest rates of eviction happened in Roxbury, Mattapan, Hyde Park and Dorchester — the same neighborhoods that saw the highest rates of COVID-19 infection.

Herald wire services contributed to this report.

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