Housing Eviction

I haven't read the book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City  It won the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction in 2017 and argues that eviction causes poverty more than it is a function of it.

-- NYT Book review by Barbara Ehrenreich

Smoking triggers eviction in Silver Spring, Maryland.  While I have no problem with smoking restrictions in multiunit housing, an article ("She was spotted smoking in ‘smoke-free’ rental housing. Now, she may be kicked out") in the Washington Post describes how a low income tenant in social housing was served an eviction notice for smoking in the common areas of the complex, which has a smoking restriction clause in the lease. 

One of the commenters made a good point, that the property manager, before taking the extreme action of eviction, could offer smoking cessation classes as a type of warning.

That makes sense to me.

The eviction machine.  In the vein of the book Evicted, the Guardian has an article on "America's eviction epidemic," focusing on Richmond, Virginia, North Carolina, and Atlanta.  In Richmond, the city housing authority is a major proponent of eviction.

Evading tenant protections in Toronto.  The Toronto Star reports ("This Toronto renter fought eviction from a man who bought just 1 per cent of the house. After 7 months, she’s giving up") on a workaround for property owners in markets with tight protections for renters, they can sell as little as 1% of the ownership of the house to a third party, who then can claim they will be moving into the unit. From the article:

... Jacky Bai Jun Liu, a first-time homebuyer in his early 20s, had acquired the landlord title after he was sold just a one per cent stake in the house in midsummer. McKenzie told the Star that Liu had told her during a phone call he was a Ryerson student and intended to move his friends into the house.

Almost immediately after the sale, Liu moved to evict seven tenants from two units, in June serving them with an N12 notice co-signed by one of the primary homeowners, informing them that Liu intended to exercise his legal right to take over the property for personal use.

On a "form versus substance" standpoint, such subterfuges shouldn't be legal because 1% ownership would normally not trigger control, and would qualify as a passive interest.

New York City special eviction protections.  In 2017, New York City passed a "Right to Counsel" law, which provides legal representation in eviction matters for people who are below the federal poverty line.  Currently, the program is limited to certain areas of the city with the highest need, because there isn't enough money and enough lawyers to fully fund and staff the program ("Year One of the NYC Tenant Right to Counsel Program," Next City).

New York State eviction protections.  With the recent progressive turn of the New York State Legislature, other protections were passed at the state level, which have had significant impact in NYC as well ("NYC evictions down almost 20% six months after state tenant protections enacted," New York Daily News). From the article:

In June, Gov. Cuomo signed off on a package of laws that made it more difficult for landlords to take apartments out of rent-regulated status and no longer allowed them to raise rents by as much as 20% when tenants move out of regulated units.

WRT rent control, in the 1950s NYC had over 2 million housing units covered by rent control, now it's less than 25,000 units.

Extending the "Right to Counsel" approach.  Just as issues raised by Moms 4 Housing are leading Bay Area jurisdictions to consider enacting tenant right to purchase laws, the "Right to Counsel" approach, providing additional assistance to impoverished households when facing eviction, in a system that is weighted to favor property owners, ought to be extended, as a way to reduce the overall human and social costs that result.