In the state of Massachusetts, no matter the outcome of an eviction case—even if it is dismissed or the final judgment is made in the tenant’s favor—the case remains publicly available online forever. As a result, even decades after an eviction case is filed in court, individuals with eviction records can experience significant difficulty attaining housing, credit, insurance, and employment. Over 1 million eviction cases have been filed in the Commonwealth since 1988, and people of color and women with children are most at risk of being denied opportunities because of these public records, as they are more statistically vulnerable to eviction.
Sealing eviction records is a matter of social justice. Black tenants are twice as likely as white tenants to face eviction in Massachusetts. Families with young children, those with disabilities, seniors, and victims of domestic violence are also at disproportionately high risk of eviction. Evictions themselves uproot people’s lives, but for these particularly at-risk groups, the court records may be even more harmful, as they last a lifetime.
Landlords who find evictions on an individual’s record may reject their rental application or use the record as justification to charge them a higher rent or security deposit. Landlords may also exploit people’s fear of eviction and neglect to complete legally required rental property repairs and upkeep. Tenants may suffer in inadequate, even dangerous living conditions or concede to an unlawful lease termination in order to avoid permanent records of eviction. This is not to mention the enormous potential obstacles to obtaining credit or holding onto a stable job due to public eviction records.
What if tenants do unfortunately find themselves embroiled in an eviction case? As mentioned in our previous blog post on the Right to Counsel, because evictions unfold in civil court, defendants are not guaranteed legal advice or representation. Since tenants typically do not have the means to hire their own attorneys but most landlords do, the outcome of an eviction case is overwhelmingly skewed in a landlord’s favor. That’s if tenants even show up. According to the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, many tenants are unable to attend court due to school, job, or childcare conflicts and receive a judgment against them by default. Some are never even notified of the action against them in the first place.
The aforementioned reasons are enough to cast real doubt on the use of eviction records as an accurate characterization of a person’s tenancy, employability, or credit-worthiness. However, these court records are not just dangerous because eviction cases are overwhelmingly unfair, the records themselves fail to tell a complete story of one’s eviction experience.
The MLRI found a number of serious and recurring issues with the eviction records readily accessible to the public via MassCourts.org. They discovered that many records are riddled with errors, such as misclassification of no-fault evictions as fault evictions and duplication of cases on people’s records. In addition, final outcomes are written in legal shorthand, ambiguous to laymen readers, and judgments paid in full are rarely reflected in the online record. Once again to the detriment of defendants in these cases, landlords’ allegations are displayed clearly online, while tenants’ statements of defense or claims against their landlords do not appear.
People who, as children, were named in eviction cases concerning their parents and therefore have records, face discrimination as adults. So do people with the same name as that of an actual defendant in an eviction case. Plenty of families and individuals face eviction because the landlord wishes to sell the property, a new owner decides to renovate the apartment, extensive repairs are required, or because of a slew of other reasons besides non-payment of rent or lease violation. However, the MLRI found that landlords and others seeking out these records rarely differentiate between parties based on the outcomes of their eviction cases; just the presence of a record, whether or not a tenant was at fault, even if the case occurred decades prior, was enough to affect their ability to secure housing, employment, and credit.
Given the evidence the MLRI laid out, we can longer treat eviction records as an accurate account of a person’s life situation, and this state must no longer sit idly by while landlords, employers, and others in power use these records to prey upon low-income renters, exclude them, and judge their reliability and worth.
The HOMES Act seeks to protect individuals from the potential negative impacts of open eviction records in several ways, but first, here are a few important definitions:
- A tenant may be subject to a “fault eviction” when they have violated the terms of their rental agreement, including failure to pay rent or to vacate the premises following termination or conclusion of their tenancy as specified in the agreement.
- A “no-fault eviction”, on the other hand, occurs due to a reason other than a tenant’s nonpayment of rent or other violation of the terms of the tenancy, such as when a landlord decides to remove the unit from rental housing use or demolish the rental property.
- Finally, “lessor action” is any civil action a tenant brings against a landlord or property manager due to a violation of the rental agreement or another law.
- Keep eviction cases sealed unless and until an allegation is proven in court
- Keep sealed no-fault evictions and other housing cases, such as when tenants are seeking repairs
- Seal all eviction records after 3 years
- Allow individuals to petition the court to seal records of fault eviction and lessor action cases before 3 years have passed if they have satisfied their judgments or agreements for judgment
- Allow parties and their representatives to view sealed cases online
- Ensure that parties may correct any errors in their eviction records
- Prohibit consumer reporting agencies or landlords from using or reporting information from a sealed court record
People should not have to bear an eternal burden because of their prior involvement in eviction cases, whether or not they were found to be at fault. With evictions on the rise due to pandemic-related financial hardship and the recently extended federal eviction moratorium set to end on October 3rd, our legislators must act swiftly. Contact your state representatives and encourage them to stand with lead sponsors Sen. Joe Boncore and Rep. Mike Moran against discrimination based on eviction records by co-sponsoring the HOMES Act!
Please contact Director of Policy Benjamin Daly at bdaly@homesforfamilies.org with any questions, comments, or concerns!
For a comprehensive report on the impacts of Massachusetts’ permanent eviction records, read Massachusetts Law Reform Institute’s “Evicted for Life” here.
To read the full Bill, please visit https://malegislature.gov/Bills/192/H1808 and https://malegislature.gov/Bills/192/S921.
Homes for Families: Opening Doors 