Dear Neighbor,
Almost everyone recognizes that making people homeless during a pandemic is dangerous to their health and a threat to public health.
Local, state and federal governments have declared multiple (overlapping, confusing and limited) moratoria and created funds with billions of dollars in potential aid to keep people in their homes.
In April 2020, thanks to Reps. Mike Connolly and Kevin Honan, the legislature passed the nation's most comprehensive eviction and foreclosure moratorium. In July 2020, they and I filed a bill with 90 cosponsors, extending the moratorium and providing other protections, including a fund to reimburse landlords for lost rent. However, formal sessions ended for the year before the legislature took it up.
In October, Gov. Baker chose to let the moratorium expire. Instead, he announced an Eviction Diversion Initiative with the Trial Court, including expanded rental assistance and opportunities for mediation during the eviction process. But we worried whether the promised services could ramp up quickly enough.
In December, I wrote a newsletter on the number of evictions already filed and on how to seek local assistance.
I worked with other senators to pass important protections as part of the budget. They eventually passed despite the Gov. Baker's attempts to amend them. They require:
- landlords to provide information about resources and process in Notices to Quit
- courts to pause the eviction process when an application for rental assistance is pending
- public reporting on the Eviction Diversion Initiative and on the federal money used for it.
It's worked - for many people
Over 35,000 households have received over $225 million in rental and mortgage assistance. About $770 million of allocated funds remains, and more aid is on the way. This chart shows the number of applications, approvals, "time outs," and denials over a 8 week period, after some changes making it easier to apply.
If an applicant isn't approved within two weeks, usually because of incomplete information (or, according to reports, because their information was lost), they are "timed out" and have to start over.
Despite recent improvements, it is still very hard for many people to get the aid they need, which is hard on both tenants and landlords. Although a few were denied because they were over income, almost half were "timed out." And those are probably the people who need it most, people with limited English or computer skills. They face a daunting, complicated, and for many an inaccessible system. Lots of them "time out" while they search for documents. For example, it's very hard to get documents from Unemployment.
The Somerville experience shows the system can work - but it requires a lot of outside help. Our Housing Stability Office has six staff, with additional bilingual volunteers and contractors. We're not that big a city, but they've all had to work hard to help people through the process - they have a 97% success rate in having applications approved.
The administration makes the process onerous in order to avoid fraud, but that keeps deserving people from getting help in time to stay in their homes. But there's a balance between avoiding fraud and preventing aid, as we've learned from the experience with unemployment assistance. The administration should remove more barriers, for example by providing more comprehensible wording and more languages. Hiring more people to assist applicants through the process could save thousands of families from losing their homes.
The pandemic is not over, despite the governor declaring an end to the emergency.
14,000 new eviction cases have been filed since October. Almost 3000 executions have been issued to landlords, meaning many tenants can be forcibly removed by sheriffs or constables. (To see how many cases have been filed or executed in your community, click on the "locations" or "zip code tab" on that dashboard.) Over 28,000 homeowners are seriously behind on their mortgage payments, and thousands of homeowners and small landlords are at imminent risk of foreclosure.
The CDC, recognizing the danger of people losing shelter during the pandemic, extended a modified moratorium on evictions, but it applies only to some people and only in counties (currently all of Mass.) with "high or substantial risk of COVID." It expires Oct. 3. There are also protections for federally-insured mortgage holders which also expire at the end of September.
Taking action to keep people housed
Last week, the Housing Committee (of which I am vice-chair) held a hearing on bills sponsored by me and Reps. Frank Moran and Kevin Honan. This is the rally before the hearing. The bill would:
- ensure that landlords pursue and cooperate with rental assistance programs before going to court. Just having an eviction case filed against them can prevent a tenant from finding new housing. Many landlords don't want to evict tenants but need the payments.
- Protect the most vulnerable tenants from forced removal for COVID-19 arrears.
- Pause no-fault evictions during the COVID-19 recovery period.
- Pause foreclosures of homeowners and require mortgage forbearance based on federal policies. Only five hundred families have received mortgage assistance; most people don't know it exists.
- Require the state to provide a simple, flexible, and fast process for rental and mortgage assistance. Advocates for both tenants and landlords agree that it's too hard and just takes too long to navigate the application process, despite some improvements.
A rally before the hearing, as well as the hearing, was covered by the Globe, the Herald, and many regional papers.
Carolyn Lomax is a Dorchester landlord who summarized the effect on both tenants and landlords. The Herald reported:
"Carolyn Lomax, from the community organization City Life/Vida Urbana, said she’s faced this issue since the pandemic began, as the owner of a Dorchester three-family apartment. One of her tenants was only able to pay rent starting this summer, and the other is still unable to do so.
"'Some of my tenants, they have applied for (rental assistance through the RAFT program) three or four times and been denied… or just lost in the system,' she said. She said her tenants have faced issues with identity mix-ups in their applications with other people.
"Lomax noted that the state is flush with cash to give out for rental assistance– almost $900 million— but she still has yet to see any of it, while still facing pressure to pay her mortgage. '(We have) all this money in the bank, right? And you’re not giving it out to help people? You know, it’s not making sense,' she said."
I could keep writing but this is very long. What would you like to hear about? (It could be about this or other issues.)
All best wishes for the rest of the summer,