Court Ruling, Variant Altering Landscape on Evictions

A growing chorus of activists and lawmakers want to see action at the state and local level to stave off a potential surge of housing removals, warning that tenants are more “exposed” in the wake of a new U.S. Supreme Court decision lifting a federal eviction moratorium…Andrea Park, a legal aid attorney with the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, said Sept. 1 will serve as “another day that rent is going to come due” for families already in the hole due to the pandemic. “People are absolutely exposed now,” Park said in an interview. “There are people who are behind on rent from COVID from last month, two months ago, last year. It’s another month that can pile up. Now that the CDC (moratorium) is not in place, to the extent that those were people who were being protected by the CDC, today or tomorrow or next week, their landlords can go to court and say ‘there’s nothing available that this tenant has told me they’re protected by, and I want them out.’ ” Read more in State House News Service. (Subscription may be required.)