Housing Authority: “We Do Not Take It Lightly”

“We realize that one of the most significant things you can do in people’s lives is to end their rental agreement,” said Karen DuBois-Walton, the president of Elm City Communities (an umbrella organization including the Housing Authority and its non-profit development and property management offshoots.) 
“We do not take that lightly. We do use it very sparingly. And we execute only after having tried a lot, a lot, a lot of things, to help people keep their family intact in housing that they can afford.”
Although DuBois-Walton said that the Housing Authority could not comment on specific eviction cases, she and four other Elm City Communities staff members provided general context for the agency’s approach to evictions in an interview.
They said that before an eviction is initiated, Housing Authority staff members reach out to a tenant who’s fallen behind on rent with letters and face-to-face check-ins. They connect tenants with Elm City Communities’ Community and Economic Development (CED) department, which can connect tenants to social services, provides financial literacy education, and small grants.
Tenants who owe back-rent can form a repayment agreement with the Housing Authority, the staff members said. They can also request a grievance hearing before an independent arbiter. 
While the Elm City Communities staffers said there is no specific amount of debt that would trigger an eviction process, they said they try to file court cases relatively early, before the debt accumulates. Most of those cases do not lead to an actual eviction. 
“You gotta work kinda hard” to get kicked out of public housing, DuBois-Walton argued. 
“It takes quite a bit of time to get there and a lot of missed opportunities that residents did not take advantage of,” added Elm City Communities Executive Vice President Shenae Draughn.
Tenants who are evicted with outstanding debt to any public housing agency in the country are automatically placed on a federal database, preventing them from renting from a housing authority in another town. Those tenants are typically unable to afford a majority of housing options in their area.
“We work really hard not to evict families, because we recognize that we are a big part of the safety net, and if families can’t make it with us, there are not great options for them beyond that,” said DuBois-Walton.
“My heart breaks for anybody that’s able to not be here,” she added. “I worry about where they end up.”