For now, Maguedala Filocsaint and her five children have a roof over their heads. But the road going forward is uncertain.
The family was evicted last month from their apartment in Orange, the Four Oranges reported. Now they are wading through a complex web of bureaucracy faced by those in dire need of housing.
Fortunately, Filocsaint’s sister has opened her door to her, which will buy her time. But the arrangement can’t go on forever and finding a new place to stay has proven difficult due to her eviction.
“Every time I fill out an application, my eviction comes up, so it’s hard to find a place,” Filocsaint said. “No one has called me back.”
An eviction is a court filing. When a landlord searches a prospective tenant’s criminal record, a past eviction can haunt a tenant like a scarlet letter. But a record of evictions may not provide a fair picture of a tenant’s dependability. Although it is true that some tenants are not “good actors,” others, like Filocsaint, withhold rent as a tactic to force a landlord to make necessary repairs to their homes, according to James Williams, director of racial justice at Fair Share Housing.
“We need to be able to discern different types of evictions,” Williams said. “There’s no context or story about why it shows up on your record.”
Filocsaint maintains that she withheld rent to force the owner of her two-bedroom apartment at 756 Vose Street to make her home habitable. The 41-year-old mother showed the Four Oranges code violations documenting hellish conditions like bug infestation and faulty plumbing that left the family defecating in buckets.
Meanwhile, Filocsaint doesn’t qualify for some of the county’s services because she surpasses the income requirement. Recently divorced from her husband, she collects alimony and child support, which disqualifies her from certain assistance. In addition to these obstacles, landlords often require a certain income to rent their apartment units, a growing problem as income has not kept pace with rental prices, the New York Times reported.
The idea that someone can be simultaneously homeless and too wealthy, and yet not wealthy enough to rent certain apartments, is an odd paradox that is unique to the United States. “It’s expensive to be poor,” Williams said.
On the morning of her eviction, Filocsaint went to City Hall as a last resort. But neither the mayor, nor his secretary were there and she could not meet with the city’s business administrator without an appointment. Chris Mobley, the deputy planning director, arranged a brief phone call with the mayor.
“They were calling shelters, but none of them had room for us,” Filocsaint said.
Filocsaint’s situation — and the lack of help from the city’s elected officials given to her — has became a rallying call for Orange residents, who believe it is evidence that the current policy of luring developers to build luxury and market-rate apartments with tax-abatements is untenable. All the while there is an underbelly of poverty and substandard housing that remains unaddressed by elected officials.
“While some of us in Orange sleep comfortably in our homes, some spent their last night because their right to shelter is being taken away due to inhabitable conditions, rent increases, sheisty slumlords, ineffective governance, and gentrification,” said Kweli Campbell, a city resident. “Why does this happen in communities of color? Why do we allow this in our community?”
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