Moving from Eviction to Housing Stability
Evictions have resumed. The pandemic pause is over. Landlords need to be paid so they can pay their own bills. But what is the fallout when landlords are compelled to evict their tenants by necessity or by choice?
When someone with children in their care is evicted, the effects echo across our society. People who are evicted can lose their possessions and their jobs and experience depression. When families struggle financially and emotionally, so does the larger community: stressed-to-capacity support services in healthcare, education, temporary shelters, hunger relief, and community safety services. For children, this instability correlates with lower academic achievement, health, and future earnings.
“The insidious part of instability is that it comes at a kid from so many different levels in terms of stress on their parents, losing basic resources, and then losing their home,” says Gina Adams, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, a social and economic policy research organization. “It’s this very core thing of stability of place, where you’ll be sleeping or eating. Housing instability crashes every support systems kid(s) could have.”
OUR SPEAKERS
Revel Sims is Assistant Professor in the Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture and Chican@ and Latin@ Studies Program at UW–Madison. He focuses on the dynamics of urban change and the shared roles of roles property owners, financial institutions, and the state.
Erica K. López is the Clinical Instructor who leads the Eviction Defense Clinic (EDC), a part of the Economic Justice Institute. The EDC started in August 2021 in response to the ongoing need for representation in rental housing cases. The EDC is part of a collaborative community partnership involving the Tenant Resource Center and local nonprofit legal aid providers Legal Action of Wisconsin and Community Justice Inc. The goal of this partnership is to provide and expand legal representation and other support (such as rental assistance, housing navigation, and community resource navigation) to low-income Dane County renters facing eviction.
Robin Sereno is Executive Director of Tenant Resource Center and has a deep understanding of the impact of eviction on the lives of individuals and families, the legal rights of renters facing eviction, and how Madison and Dane County are addressing rental assistance through the federal pandemic funds.
Susan Jennik (Moderator) is a member of LWVDC and serves on the Social Equity subcommittee of the Program and Advocacy Committee. She also serves on the LWVWI Legislative Committee, focusing on labor and employment. Ms. Jennik is a retired attorney who represented labor unions, employee benefit funds, and workers in the New York City area for 38 years.