The Human Faces of Piacenza’s Evictions
Evictions are a fundamentally unjust process that often devastate families and communities. They can ruin credit and make it difficult for people to find affordable housing. They take a mental and emotional toll, and have an especially high impact on communities of color and low-income families. In fact, Black tenants are twice as likely to be evicted than white people.
Mass evictions are a major human rights issue. They violate international law, including Article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which prohibits arbitrary or unlawful interference with an individual’s privacy, family, home, or correspondence. They also violate the right to adequate housing and the right not to be subjected to ill-treatment (articles 23 and 27 of the ICCPR).
Forced evictions are a key cause of a longstanding and largely unrecognized crisis in American housing. They result in more than one million homes being vacated each year and are the primary reason that people live in unsafe, substandard or dangerous places.
The Human Faces of Piacenza’s Evictions – Stories of Displacement and Struggle
This is especially true for Black and Latinx families who face disproportionately higher rates of eviction due to decades of systemic inequalities in the housing market, discrimination and devaluation in their neighborhoods and lack of access to legal aid or affordable rental options.
In response to the pandemic, some cities passed “right to counsel” laws, but federal and state governments need to do more to protect tenants from mass evictions and ensure that those whose homes are threatened have access to counsel. In addition, federal and state governments need to support city and state policies that provide additional rent relief for tenants facing evictions.
We need a comprehensive national response to address mass evictions during the pandemic and beyond, as well as to strengthen our ties to our communities. This means expanding the current federal eviction moratorium to include an effective emergency rent relief package, enforcing our existing right to counsel laws, and investing in cities that are implementing their own right to counsel legislation.
A right to counsel is the only way to prevent mass evictions, ensuring that all tenants have access to the legal counsel they need in order to protect their rights. This is the only effective way to fight back against the harmful effects of evictions and create a truly just and equitable system of housing in our country.
This is especially important as evictions are an increasingly common way for landlords to profit off of the housing crisis, and many tenants can’t afford to pay their rent or have any legal defense. As a result, tenants are being forced into unfair and illegal situations that can end up in the courts or in the street.
As the CDC’s eviction moratorium ends on January 31, federal and state governments need to invest in new policy measures to keep people in their homes. Congress should pass a federal bill that provides funding for cities and states that implement a right to counsel and support a fully effective moratorium on evictions.