The Foreclosure Crisis Hits Renters

As renters, we’ve felt pretty comfortable as the foreclosure crisis has spread. We continue to write our check to the landlord every month, then watch news reports about families losing their homes with a mix of shock and relief.

Those poor people. Better them than us, though.

At least, that’s what we thought. A new report shows that New England’s renters have been affected by the mortgage crisis as much (if not more so) than single-family homeowners.

As if plotting the best way to hoard rice wasn’t causing us to lose enough sleep.

The [National Low Income Housing Coalition] estimates at least 45 percent of the housing units in the final stage of foreclosure in those four states [MA, RI, CT, NH] were occupied by renters whose landlords were behind on payments.

The report itself is also filled with sobering figures.

In Boston, cases of eviction due to foreclosure heard by the Housing Court at least doubled from 2006 to 2007, reaching roughly 20 per week[.]

And we thought we were throwing away our money back when our landlords were raising our rent just for the hell of it.