"AS A FEDERAL rental assistance program winds down, housing advocates are looking to the state to help fill the gap. But the state assistance programs are not as generous as the federal program was, leading to concerns that struggling tenants – particularly tenants of color – could increasingly face evictions. Housing assistance will be up for debate Thursday as the state Senate considers its version of a $1.6 billion supplemental budget bill.
On Tuesday, Homes for All Massachusetts and researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released a report which found that evictions are disproportionately occurring in Black and Latino neighborhoods, neighborhoods with more single mother heads of households, areas with absentee and corporate landlords, and in central and southeast Massachusetts. Of all evictions filed between October 2020 and October 2021, 43 percent were in neighborhoods where a majority of residents are non-white, even though only 32 percent of rental housing is in these areas."
