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.
For Juana, a single mother and survivor of domestic violence, fighting the unwarranted eviction was the only option to protect her family from homelessness. While all renters in Connecticut face highly inflated rent costs, many immigrants encounter additional challenges, such as language barriers and lack of credit history, which further complicate finding quality housing. Despite paying taxes, immigrants often lack access to subsidized housing due to not having a Social Security number. These factors place immigrant families like Juana’s at greater risk of experiencing housing cost burden and eviction.
In Connecticut, the combination of high housing costs and low vacancy rates has created what some have deemed as the worst place in the country for renters. High housing costs place renters at risk of eviction. In fact, Connecticut towns that have high rental costs compared to average incomes have greater eviction rates. Here, landlords are able to evict tenants in order to raise rent prices, even when tenants have been paying the rent on time. And this occurrence happens more often to Black and Latino/a renters, particularly female-headed households like Juana’s.
HB 6889, An Act Concerning Evictions for Cause could help address this injustice. This bill would build on protections already in place for elderly and disabled residents and expand protections to all renters in Connecticut. Specifically, HB 6889 would prohibit landlords from carrying out ‘no fault’ evictions of tenants occupying units in buildings with more than five units. This means that, if a tenant is paying their rent on time like Juana was, they cannot be unjustly evicted because the landlord wants to raise the rent.
Recent evidence indicates that, if passed, this policy would not stymie housing production, but it would serve to keep families like Juana’s stably housed. The prevention of eviction and homelessness can help build stronger and safer communities for renters and homeowners alike. This policy would put us in line with other progressive states like California, Colorado, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, and Washington, which already have just cause eviction laws.
Preventing no-fault evictions through the HB 6889 could also have life-saving impacts. Research indicates that high rental burdens and subsequent evictions place renters at an increased risk of adverse health outcomes, including mental distress, reproductive health outcomes, and even premature death. Preventing no-fault evictions would also address retaliatory evictions that take place when tenants advocate for improved health and safety conditions in their unit. This would be especially important for families with children, who have a disproportionate risk for eviction and subsequent economic difficulties.
As the Trump administration moves to cut affordable housing and targets immigrant families for deportation, we need to take action in Connecticut to protect our neighbors. To our representatives in Hartford who are concerned about the health and stability of families and the rights of immigrant communities like Juana’s, we strongly encourage you to support Just Cause and vote in favor of HB 6889.
Patricia Lewis, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Sciences at
Sacred Heart University, is a member of the Scholars Strategy Network Connecticut Chapter. Teresa Quintana of Manchester is an Organizer at Make the Road CT in Hartford.