The eviction process can be fraught and complicated under any set of circumstances. However, with non-profit and subsidized rental units, this process can at times be even more complicated for tenants and service providers.
Six of the top 15 most frequent evictors since 2023 are landlords that provide subsidized housing, receive public development assistance, or have a significant number of voucher-holders in their units. This includes non-profit housing providers, organizations that receive government subsidies to provide affordable housing as part of programs like Section 42, and governmental/quasi-governmental agencies.
Roughly 20% of all evictions filed since the start of 2023 have been by landlords that provide at least some subsidized housing to tenants. This includes private landlords that receive government subsidies, such as Valley View Apartments (79 filings since 2023) and the Meadowlands (51); non-profit housing providers such as Porchlight, Inc. (46), Housing Initiatives (21), and Common Wealth Development, Inc. (16); and governmental housing agencies such as the Dane County Housing Authority (12).
In total, nonprofits filed for 146 evictions since 2023, with 15 of these cases ending in judgments of eviction. Subsidized housing providers filed for 613 evictions, with 45 of these ending in judgments of eviction. The rest of the cases were dismissed, in most cases due to the efforts and rental assistance funds of the EDDP.
These landlords vary wildly, from multi-family, low-income tax credit complexes owned by companies with perhaps thousands of units across the country, to small, local non-profits with staffs of 10 people. Their practices can likewise vary, from those that will file for eviction as a last resort, to those that file for eviction frequently.
Community Justice Inc. attorney Carousel Bayrd says her experience as an attorney for tenants in subsidized or non-profit housing is a mixed bag. Some of the landlords are reasonable and understanding, but others aren’t and are “assertive and aggressive” in eviction court. “It’s surprising and disappointing,” Bayrd said.
Nonprofits and subsidized providers will often rent to tenants that private landlords won’t, such as those with behavioral health challenges, severely low-incomes, or those that have experienced chronic homelessness. These barriers often add additional challenges for tenants and landlords alike and typically require additional services in order to maintain housing stability. Additionally, these landlords are often the last safety net before homelessness. “They are supposed to be a support network for tenants, and when they work best that’s what they are,” said University of Wisconsin Eviction Defense Clinic Attorney Grace Kube, who has represented numerous tenants in these units. “But tenants are at their mercy a lot of the time.”
Nonprofits more often filed for reasons other than non-payment of rent than subsidized and market rate housing providers. Whereas subsidized and market rate landlords file solely for nonpayment of rent in most cases (83 and 88 percent, respectively), nonprofits only filed for nonpayment of rent in half of all cases. The remaining cases were either solely non-rent related lease violations or for multiple types of lease violations. Despite these differences, the amount of rent that tenants owed at the time of filing were similar, with tenants owing between $3,485 and $3,534 on average, across subsidized, non-profit and unsubsidized properties.
Evicting tenants in subsidized housing causes additional harm to an already vulnerable population. Dane County has a severe shortage of affordable housing, and an eviction on a tenant’s record can impede them from finding affordable housing in the future.
Permanent supportive housing and those that are a part of the Dane County Homeless Consortium have set higher standards for themselves, such as those outlined in Housing First standards. “The whole point is not to cycle them back into homelessness,” says Legal Action of Wisconsin attorney Heidi Wegleitner.
Tenants in subsidized apartments, meanwhile, may have additional protections under the federal CARES Act, such as a 30-day eviction notice compared to the 5-day notice required by Wisconsin state law. However, there is little governmental oversight to ensure quality management and adherence to the law, according to Wegleitner.
In examining this issue, it’s important to note there are limits to the data. First, some of the subsidized apartment buildings have a mixture of subsidized and unsubsidized units, and we do not know if the tenants who faced eviction at these properties lived in subsidized units or not. Additionally, most subsidized housing providers in Dane County are captured in our dataset, but some aren’t, since a comprehensive accounting of subsidized apartments does not currently exist. Our analysis also does not count tenants facing eviction who receive voucher-based rental subsidies through programs like Section 8, since those subsidies are attached to the voucher-holder, not any specific property.