Tenants in Foreclosed Houses are Being Thrown Out on to the Streets

Despite much focus on the plight of renters the abuse continues. Tenants in foreclosed houses are being thrown out on to the streets.

It is a common sight to see boarded up apartment units in cities. The emergency shelters meanwhile are choc-a-bloc with women and children. The flow has not stopped. More are coming. Mercedes Marquez the general manager of city housing bemoaned, “The doors are busting down with people with this problem. And the wave is still coming.”

The situation has reached such a point that the city council of Los Angeles has stopped evictions. It has also decided to purchase the empty units and make them into affordable quarters.

Janice Johnson is one of the many caught in this deluge. She dragged herself into Skid Row homeless shelter with three children in tow, tired from hunting for an apartment. When a bank took over her house in south Los Angeles she stayed for two years in a rented apartment. She is a single mother living off welfare. All she wants is to see that the children are able to go to school. Frequently the school is telling her that her 8-year-old child goes off to sleep during class hours.

It is the same scene in cities throughout America. Sheriff Thomas J. Dart of Cook County in Chicago as stipulated that the banks would have to give the tenants four months grace before evicting them. In 2008 he had categorically stopped evictions after seeing the plight of the tenants. The number of foreclosure related evictions has gone up three fold since the last two years. In 2008 there had been 4,500 evictions.

The administration in Boston took the innovative measure of sending out postcards to tenants informing them about their rights and the name of a local contact. If the tenants are deprived of heat the inspectors of the city arrange for the same and bill it to the owner. Simultaneously the city is trying out ways to purchase the foreclosed units. The lenders and their troops want these houses to be unoccupied but the city authorities want the opposite – occupation of these units.

Tenants either in big or small cities as well as the suburbs are in the same boat – in constant danger of eviction through no fault of theirs. They do not even know if the house is in foreclosure. Many of them are employed but they do not have the extra cash required to hunt and shift to new quarters.

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