by LAURA GLESBY The new haven independent
Ronisha Baskin didn’t know how to tell her 14-year-old daughter that the Housing Authority of New Haven had evicted them. “I didn’t even know what to say.” She could not find the words to explain that a lack of housing options would force them to split up across different cities.
After their June eviction from the Essex Townhouses on Quinnipiac Avenue, Baskin crashed at her mom’s apartment in Waterbury with her four-year-old son, braving the family conflicts she knew would await her. She sent her teenage daughter, who still had a few weeks left of eighth grade, to live with an aunt related to her ex-partner in New Haven.
Public housing evictions are rising in New Haven after a pandemic-era lull. In the first half-year of 2023, the public housing agency has filed more rent-related eviction lawsuits — 50 — than in all of 2019, when it filed 42 cases. This year, nine Housing Authority tenants had to leave their homes due to unpaid rent, either through a summary process eviction or a stipulation in which they agreed to move out.
Non-payment cases have affected 5 percent of all 1,022 Housing Authority of New Haven (HANH) households this year. The agency reported that among those families, 29 have received rent assistance from the state’s UniteCT program — an “eviction prevention fund” that recently changed to only serve tenants who have already been summoned to eviction court. (These statistics do not include tenants who rent from HANH’s non-profit affiliate, 360 Management.)
As a government agency providing federally-funded affordable housing, the Housing Authority primarily serves very low-income families. Rent is typically set at 30 percent of a family’s income. According to the agency’s director, Karen DuBois-Walton, the average rent among Housing Authority tenants is about $250 per month — less than a quarter of New Haven’s federally-determined Fair Market Rent of $1,186 for a one-bedroom.
Public housing tenants who fall behind on rent to the point of facing eviction are typically earning poverty wages or surviving on social security. For some fighting to stay in their homes, daily routines are made up of painful financial calculations. Internet service gets canceled. So does summer camp. Car notes go unpaid. Meals turn into bowls of dry cereal, if anything at all.
In a local housing market distinguished by very low vacancy rates, tenants who get evicted often struggle to find another place to go. And when their landlord is a major government system serving the lowest-income city residents, evicted tenants are left with even fewer options.
Baskin struggled to tell her daughter about the eviction because she felt ashamed. “Me and my kids are very close,” she said. “They are so used to me being supermom.” After agreeing to a “final stay” stipulation that required her to leave at the start of June, Baskin arranged for her daughter to live elsewhere without quite explaining why.
Baskin finally broached the topic with her daughter. “She keeps saying, ‘Mom. It’s all right. You’re not less than,’ ” Baskin recounted. “I said ‘I’m sorry. I don’t even know what I did wrong, but I’m sorry.’ ”
The loss of their home has pulled the three-person family apart into different cities. “It’s changed a lot. My life. My kids’ life,” Baskin said. “It messed my mental health up a lot.”
Having been kicked out, the family tumbled into a new depth of uncertainty about where they would find their next home — and how long they’d go without one.