As rents soar in Boston, low-income tenants try to stave off eviction
“Eviction initiations in Massachusetts spiked in 2008, following the Great Recession. Each year since then, landlords have sued about 40,000 heads of household across the state seeking to evict them, according to data gathered by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting. The state doesn’t track how many of these have resulted in actual evictions, but the Eviction Lab at Princeton University found that in 2016, there were roughly 15,708 forced removals in Massachusetts — an average of nearly 43 a day. That’s about double the number of evictions in 2005, before the housing bubble burst, and it probably does not reflect how many people are displaced, since it does not include the number of renters who leave once they get their notice, and those who strike deals with their landlords to stay temporarily. Some legislators and activists say that evictions disproportionately affect the poorest, most vulnerable members of our society, who, like Stanley, end up in court without legal representation.”