How the Other Half Lives

As sunbathers and tourists enjoyed the at­tractions of the Coney Island Boardwalk on the morning of July 27, 1937, a differ­ent kind of crowd gathered a few blocks away at 2851 West 25th Street. There, 500 people stood outside a four-family apartment building to pro­test the eviction of William Winkler, his wife, and two young children. According to a New York Times article about the demonstration, the City Marshal forcibly removed the Winklers from their apartment after they could not afford a $10 rent increase.

Today, a spectacle like that of the one in Coney Island—attracting protestors, the City Marshal, and reporters—would not take place because, as Harvard sociologist Matthew Desmond writes, “evictions are too commonplace to attract atten­tion.” Last year, 7,000 renter households were evicted in Baltimore; while in Milwaukee, one in eight renters is evicted every two years. In urban communities across the country, rising property costs, stagnant wages among low-income work­ers, and underfunded federal housing assistance programs have made it increasingly difficult for the poor to pay their rent. Desmond, who re­cently released Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, argues that many urban commu­nities now face an eviction epidemic—a prob­lem that’s “among the most urgent and pressing issues facing America today.”

For low-income renters living in cities where safe and affordable housing is scarce, the threat of eviction has become a daily part of life. With 25 percent of all low-income families spending more than 70 percent of their income on hous­ing, an emergency medical bill or other unex­pected cost can force a rental household to fall behind on rent. Already relegated to living in substandard housing, the urban poor are fur­ther made vulnerable by an exploitative housing market and byzantine legal system.

Slumlords and Subpar Housing

According to a recently published report by the Center for American Progress, there are 30 million housing units in the United States with inadequate heating, gas leaks, and oth­er physical or health hazards. Such units are disproportionately in low-income neighbor­hoods and occupied by those who are at the front line of the eviction crisis. Although ev­ery state (excluding Arkansas) holds landlords legally responsible for providing tenants with units that are safe and meet the local housing code, the enforcement of “implied warranty of habitability” laws is far more complicated in low-income housing markets.

Legally, tenants have the right to withhold their rent if the landlord fails to properly maintain the unit. But, as Desmond writes in Evicted, tenants can only take “advantage of legal protections designed to keep their housing safe and decent” if they are up to date on their rent payments and haven’t otherwise violated the terms of their lease. When tenants fail to honor their lease agreements, their landlords gain legal stand­ing to force an eviction, undermining a tenant’s ability to ensure a unit is habitable. For “slum­lords”—whom often have little trouble finding occupants for their properties—it’s economi­cally beneficial to evict a tenant who complains about a unit’s maintenance rather than make the necessary repairs.

Even when tenants are up to date on rent, ef­forts to improve the conditions of their units can prove futile. In the event a tenant does success­fully secure a health or building department in­spection, it’s not uncommon for the inspector to be met by a landlord’s bribes or even threats, thus avoiding the filing of a housing code viola­tion. Other times, tenants fail to follow the ex­act guidelines that govern implied warranty of habitability laws. In March 2016, NPR report­ed how LaToya Fowlkes, a Baltimore renter, was forced to pay her landlord $4,900 in rent for a house with “leaky water pipes, chipped paint, rodents and a huge hole in the living room wall” because Fowlkes had failed to notify him about the repair problems by certified mail. According to Maryland landlord-tenant law, a tenant must notify a landlord of habitability problems “by providing actual notice or by certified mail.” As evident by Fowlkes’ case, many tenants have few ways to remedy their unsafe living con­ditions due to the fine print of warrant of hab­itability laws. And, when tenants attempt to compel their landlord to make repairs by with­holding rent, they put themselves at risk for be­ing evicted.

Navigating Rent Court

When served an eviction notice, tenants must navigate a complex legal process that includes going before a judge in “rent court.” However, few tenants who are summoned to court have knowledge of how the legal proceedings op­erate and the kinds of rights entitled to them. According to the Public Justice Center’s study of Baltimore’s rent court, 50 percent of tenants surveyed “knew virtually nothing” about how to defend their cases and few had legal representa­tion. On the other hand, nearly all landlords who appeared in court had an attorney or debt man­agement agent to represent them. As Fowlkes, the Baltimore renter forced to pay the rent for her crumbling unit, told NPR, “It’s hard for ten­ants, because tenants don’t know the law. And then you have these landlords who just go and buy agents…So they just know a lot of stuff, they know how to get around, they know how to work the judge over and that’s not fair.”

The convoluted rent court system that favors landlords armed with legal representation pres­ents low-income renters with yet another bur­den. Because they don’t know their legal rights, poor renters rarely receive favorable judgments in eviction cases. Last year in Oklahoma City, it was landlords who received favorable judg­ments in 95 percent of all eviction cases. Most often, to avoid having an eviction put on their credit record, tenants pay up, make a deal with their landlord, or simply move out. When rent­ers try to defend themselves and make formal defense appeals, they too are unsuccessful. The Public Justice Center found that when renters tried to raise a habitability defense, present­ing testimony of units with pest infestations, non-functioning plumbing, and other hazards, their claims were frequently discredited. Judges failed to recognize habitability-based defens­es in fifty percent of all cases in Baltimore rent court due in part to a perception held among judges that poor tenants are “trying to game the system” to avoid paying rent. Apparently, low-income renters like living in substandard housing just as much as “welfare cheats” enjoy not working.

Resolving the Eviction Epidemic

With some estimating the number of Americans evicted each year in the millions, there’s no pan­acea for the scarcity of safe and affordable hous­ing. In the United States, there are 10.4 million extremely low income households, but only 3.2 million affordable housing units. Such figures should raise alarm among policymakers and encourage investment in the Public Housing Capital Fund and the HOME Investment Partnership which provide cities and states with funds to repair the housing stock. While the re­cently released Republican Party platform calls for a reduction in spending on federal housing programs, an increased investment in federal programs perhaps offers the most promise for solving the eviction epidemic. Desmond, and other scholars, have even called for the cre­ation of a universal housing choice voucher pro­gram. While the US Department of Housing and Urban Development already operates a federal Housing Choice Voucher Program, its limited funding has left the program without the ca­pacity to provide those who need housing with vouchers. Desmond’s suggestion makes sense as it would provide low-income Americans with the opportunity to live in units that cost less, and if regulated properly, be significantly safer than the ones the poor currently occupy.

As a short-term solution, it seems that the ef­fects of the eviction epidemic could be mitigat­ed if low-income renters had greater access to legal services. Clearly, the lack of legal repre­sentation and knowledge of landlord-tenant law hinders the ability of tenants to win any kind of favorable judgement in rent court. While many cities have non-profit tenants-rights and hous­ing organizations that seek to provide low-in­come renters with help, such organizations along with pro-bono Legal Aid attorneys are overwhelmed and inundated with large case­loads. Expanding access to landlord-tenant law resources would be a good first step in combat­ing the eviction crisis and ensuring that all rent­ers, regardless of their socioeconomic status, re­ceive justice.

In America, great emphasis is placed on the role of “the home.” Saccharine phrases like “home is where the heart is,” “home sweet home,” and “there’s no place like home,” are ingrained in the American lexicon. At the very least, a home, whether a sprawling mcman­sion or a walk-up apartment, provides some semblance of shelter. But, for America’s poor­est, access to one of the most basic necessi­ties is elusive. Housing, or the lack thereof, is a driving force behind poverty. Low-income renters are forced to pay significant portions of their incomes for dilapidated housing that can have detrimental effects on their physical and psychological well-being. In the case of an eviction, poor renters are uprooted and forced to find another unit, live in a shelter, or even re­sort to living on the street. As James Baldwin wrote, “Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor; and if one is a member of a captive population, economically speaking, one’s feet have simply been placed on the treadmill for­ever.” Without safe and affordable housing op­portunities, America’s least well-off will remain trapped by poverty.