There’s no easy way to tell small children they are losing their home. Lloyd Hunt learned that on a sunny Friday seven months ago.
For more than two years, Hunt and his partner had paid the rent on the three-bedroom apartment they shared with their children, ages 4 and 7. Then came an abrupt text message from the family’s landlord: They had three months to move or she would evict them.
Hunt said he still doesn’t know why his landlord decided to kick them out. The 34-year-old bank analyst acknowledged that the family of four could be messy, but he said they took care of their unit and kept the noise down.
His daughter, in particular, grappled with the news: To a second-grader, it just didn’t seem fair.
“Kid, the world’s not fair,” Hunt said he told her. Their family was just one of more than 11,000 to face the threat of eviction in Erie County last year.
Evictions are surging again in Western New York and throughout much of the state. Forbidden from evicting under a pandemic-era ban, then slowed by crowded court dockets, Erie County landlords are now moving to remove tenants at roughly the same rate they did before the pandemic.
More than 5,700 eviction cases have been filed in Erie County this year – a figure that does not account for illegal or informal evictions, like Hunt’s, that take place outside of the housing court system. In 2022, eviction filings in all eight Western New York counties exceeded rates from before the pandemic.
The trend marks a grim return to normal for a region where deep poverty combined with aging and subpar housing, have long made renting precarious. But fast-rising rents and a worsening affordable housing shortage have made it particularly difficult for some renters to stay in their homes, with sometimes dire consequences.
Families can be torn from support networks. Children are forced to change schools. In January, the Homeless Alliance of Western New York recorded an unprecedented…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply