Retaliatory evictions: a scourge of housing dishonesty and inhumanity
Sitting down under the muscled crown moldings and mantelpieces of the Rochester City Hall council chambers, I felt a sense of steadfast strength as I noticed large groups of jovial, confident community members gathering. Rochester’s third housing town hall was a roller coaster of haunting stories of illegal evictions, inhumane housing conditions, abusive slumlords, and passionate calls to action, moderated by astute and empowered Councilmember Kim Smith.
Quickly, the harsh reality of retaliatory evictions came into light. These types of tenant removals, sometimes referred to as no-cause evictions, occur when landlords evict tenants for reporting code violations and inhabitable living conditions. Many multi-family and single-family flats in the city are in a state of abject disrepair, lacking certificates of ownership (which would prove habitability). With over 12,000 active code violations in Rochester, the breeding ground is ripe for such prolific, vengeful retaliations.
Impatient and ignorant landlords who hide behind LLCs and realty management companies have no grace to accommodate complaints of worsening living conditions, ignoring pleading voicemails and deciding that a proactive tenant is better off as no tenant of theirs, thus pursuing a quick and merciless eviction.
Two town hall attendees – Omi and Jah – shared their eviction stories with me in a later interview. Sitting down to hear recent, heartbreaking recounts of evictions and squalid living conditions the young couple had faced was like a slap in the face. To be called “low-lifers,” broken into, and screamed at by the landlord’s maintenance man was only the tip of the iceberg. Nothing worked as it should: the shower drain was deeply clogged, the broken fridge yielded spoiled food for weeks, and property managers and code enforcement officers rarely answered pleading phone calls.
That’s right, even code enforcement, the city government’s agency – that would be responsible for rescuing tenants back to basic habitability – wouldn’t send officers for months – not even for oven wires chewed out by rat infestations during the dead of winter!
Jah recounts an incident where their landlord’s hired maintenance man physically attacked and later pulled a knife on him. Omi recalls the same man screaming at her, “‘I’ll put my hands on you if I have to,’” alongside a violent stream of insults and threats. Which makes it so intolerable that when Omi and Jah tried to file reports with the city police (who failed to respond to voicemails), their landlord quickly retaliated and illegally evicted them without a judge. In a sweeping blow, the landlord abruptly evicted the neighbors for complaining as well.
The condescending, double standard-enforcing, self-victimizing cronies of housing’s backwards bureaucracy dismally blur the few existing frameworks designed to prevent tenants like Omi’s and Jah’s plights. Regardless, withholding rent due to inhabitability is only deemed legal through a backdoor string of policy. Furthermore, holdover evictions do not require landlords to state a purpose in court. It doesn’t take a savvy criminal to navigate oneself through the legal and political loopholes of these frameworks.
In exploring the nuances of this sore spot, I had the pleasure of speaking with Lisle Coleman, a representative from the Rochester Tenant Union, the primary body tasked with supporting and advocating for local tenant rights. Coleman explained to me that landlords commonly retaliate either when tenants are withholding rent payments in escrow legally or when they call code enforcement. Either way, landlord retaliation is illegal, but lackluster attorneys, as Jah confirms, often aren’t able to prove retaliation in court. Highly paid and highly skilled attorneys of the landlords, on the rare occasion that they even have time to go to court, often pass the eviction off as a holdover eviction, which legally doesn’t require a cause to be stated. That’s why Coleman advocates for the statewide implementation of Good Cause eviction reinforcements, which would mandate landlords to state the cause when filing for an eviction, making it impossible for landlords to illegally retaliate. These protections would corroborate a suite of universal rent stabilization mandates and an expanded Emergency Tenant Protection Act, ensuring a watertight uplifting of housing quality and affordability across New York State.
Solutions like Good Cause are being thrust into the eyes of state legislators. For now, while we wait, we must clear up distorted prejudices and assumptions about eviction events, especially if retaliatory. Systemically, political and public safety chains of command are shown time and time again to be dysfunctional in the worst of housing crises. Systemically, however, advocates and victims can continue to share stories at public rallies and events like the Housing Crisis Town Hall, where legislators sit on the other side of the room, taking notes. One step at a time, this scourge of condescension and inhumanity will be driven away.
Written by Corban Vogler
