MAYOR WALSH BOLSTERS RESOURCES FOR TENANTS AT RISK OF EVICTION AHEAD OF LIFT ON STATEWIDE EVICTION MORATORIUM
BOSTON - Saturday, October 3,
2020 - Building on his commitment to keeping residents in the City of Boston
stably housed, Mayor Martin J. Walsh today announced steps the City is taking
to ensure Bostonians at risk of eviction know their rights and have access to
the resources available to them ahead of the end of the statewide eviction
moratorium, which ends October 17. The resources include legal support,
financial assistance and communications outreach. In addition, on Monday,
Mayor Walsh will file an ordinance requiring property owners to include
tenants' rights information and resources available when issuing a Notice to
Quit, which is the first step in the legal process of eviction.
"Since the beginning of
the COVID-19 pandemic, the City of Boston has made it a priority to provide
supports to residents, including housing assistance. Now more than ever, as we
get closer to the end of the statewide eviction moratorium, it's vital that we
bolster our efforts to keep residents in their homes," said Mayor
Walsh.
Legal Support
The City of Boston is enhancing
its efforts to ensure that tenants at risk for eviction have better access to
legal assistance. The Office of Housing Stability has hired an
additional housing court navigator to assist tenants who are beginning the
eviction process. Housing court navigators assess the tenant's situation and
determine which resources and services would be useful to preserve and
stabilize their tenancy. This may include linking them to financial assistance,
housing search, and advocacy organizations. This broader social services
approach supports tenants and helps them to access financial assistance from
the Residential Assistance for Families in Transition (RAFT) and the Rental
Relief Fund.
In addition, the City will
contract with Greater Boston Legal Services to add additional attorneys to
assist tenants facing eviction. OHS staff will hold multiple weekly
virtual clinics for eviction defense following the end of the moratorium.
As part of his legislative agenda, Mayor Walsh supports An Act to Ensure Right to Counsel in
Eviction Proceedings, which would provide any low-income tenant
facing eviction with a court-appointed attorney for representation. He offered testimony in support of
this legislation last July.
Financial Assistance
The Rental Relief Fund will
accept new applications after the eviction moratorium ends, with up to $4,000
in rental assistance is available for eligible tenants. The Rental Relief Fund was
established in April 2020 to aid residents who lost their income due to
coronavirus and were unable to pay their rent. The City of Boston dedicated $3
million to the first round of the Fund, and then added an additional $5 million
in June. To date, the Fund has distributed more than $3 million to more than
900 households.
Communications Outreach
To ensure that the information
about the City of Boston's eviction prevention efforts will be received by
those most at-risk, the Office of Housing Stability will be conducting a broad
outreach and engagement plan. Beginning next week, a mailing encouraging
residents to utilize the services available on the Office of Housing Stability (OHS)
website will be distributed to to 46,000 households in
Boston. Households receiving this mailing were identified utilizing a
multi-modal analysis that factored in historic eviction data, equity and income
in Boston's neighborhoods, and recent data on job loss. The mailing will
provide eviction guidance in six languages, including English, Spanish,
Chinese, Haitian Creole, Cape Verde Creole and Vietnamese.
In addition to mailing
resources, the Office of Housing Stability will be conducting neighborhood
community meetings starting in October to share resources on tenants' rights,
applying for assistance, and filing for a CDC moratorium declaration.
The Centers for Disease Control
(CDC) issued a federal eviction moratorium intended to prevent the further
spread of COVID-19. The order, ending on December 31, 2020, prevents
the evictions of people who lost work as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In
order to be covered by the CDC moratorium, tenants are required to sign
and submit a declaration to their
landlord stating that they qualify for protection under the moratorium. The
City of Boston has translated this declaration into eleven languages, and
posted it on the Office of Housing Stability website so tenants can
sign it and send it to their landlord.
The City has also taken steps
to enhance programs to help homeowners, many of whom are small landlords, to
meet their own financial obligations, make critical repairs, and stay in their
homes. The Boston Home Center (BHC) has partnered with the City of Boston's
Tax/Title division to reach out to 8,000+ homeowners who owe the City property
taxes. This multilingual insert directs homeowners at-risk to the BHC's Foreclosure Prevention and
Intervention services. To ensure that homeowners have access to
financial assistance for critical home repairs, Mayor Walsh recently announced
that the Seniors Save program
is increasing grants from $3,500 to $8,000 for the total replacement of a
heating system for Bostonians older than 60 who meet income eligibility
requirements. In addition, the Lead Safe Program is increasing its loan limit
from $8,000 to $10,000 per unit as a three year deferred forgivable loan, and
the Triple Decker program has been merged with the Homeworks program so that
now any three unit home can be eligible for up to $30,000 in a deferred
forgivable loan.