BOSTON (AP) — Massachusetts had some of the nation’s strongest tenant protections during the federal CARES Act’s eviction moratorium, with thousands of residential evictions suspended in state court and a block on the filing of most new cases.
But a two-month investigation of the federal and state moratoriums by Boston University journalism students, in collaboration with the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism, found holes in safeguards against evictions for Massachusetts tenants emerged soon after the laws took effect.
At least 70 illegal eviction cases were filed in Massachusetts Housing Court this spring, including 50 violating the national ban that blocked displacing renters in most federally subsidized properties. Some tenants were only a few hundred dollars in arrears, lived in the poorest areas of the commonwealth and nearly all lacked lawyers, court records show.
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