Just Cause Eviction is an essential policy for the health and safety of CT residents
Patricia Lewis and Teresa Quintana | CT Mirror
Juana is a Hartford resident who immigrated to the United States over 10 years ago. In 2022, like many Connecticut renters, Juana faced a substantial and unaffordable rent increase.
Terrified by the prospect of eviction, she sought help from Make the Road CT (MRCT) – a community-based organization focused on empowering immigrant and working-class communities. Neighbors from Juana’s building joined her at MRCT and they learned to collectively address the rent increase by organizing to demand better housing.
Unfortunately, many residents received eviction notices soon thereafter and some of Juana’s neighbors fled in fear. This tragedy could have been prevented if Connecticut had a Just Cause eviction protection policy in place.
The experience of Juana and her neighbors is unfortunately not uncommon. Stable housing is not the reality for many renters in Connecticut where housing costs are unaffordable, and few policies exist to protect tenants from price hikes and retaliatory evictions. There is a long history in our country of treating renters as second-class citizens, and they currently face segregationist zoning policies, limited protections in economic crises, and exclusion from tax policies that benefit homeowners. In this restrictive environment, housing instability is commonplace, and many low-income renters shuffle from one bad apartment to another, often involuntarily.