Serge moderates ABA panel

Serge Martinez moderated a panel for the ABA Forum on Affordable Housing & Community Development discussing Hyperlocal: The role of place-based governance entities in shaping communities. Panelists included Professor Sheila Foster (Georgetown), Nate Storring (Project for Public Spaces) , and Professor Sarah Swan (Rutgers).

Eviction Sealing Should Top New Mexico’s Legislative Housing Agenda

Our partners at the United South Broadway Corporation recently published this piece from Allison Freedman in their monthly newsletter. Allison argues that eviction records should be sealed at the point of filing to protect tenants from the harms of the eviction screening market. She suggests that any legislation should include three main components:

1.      All eviction cases must be sealed at the point of filing. They should be unsealed where the landlord prevails and the tenant is actually removed from the home;

2.      Cases older than seven years should be automatically sealed as stale evictions should not be used as a predictor of future tenant behavior; and

3.      Tenants should be able to request that eviction records be sealed before seven years under special circumstances, including when the parties agree or a judge determines that sealing records is in the interests of justice.

New Mexico tenants are organizing in the face of substandard housing conditions

Serge Martinez was quoted in this article  in Searchlight New Mexico about tenant organizing in the face of substandard housing.

“Code enforcement is overworked, underfunded, under-resourced and just doesn’t really have the ability to enforce a lot of these rules,” Martinez said. 

Tenants do have legal options. If their housing is unfit for occupancy, for one, they’re allowed to withhold a portion of their rent. But “as a practical matter,” Martinez said, “it’s really perilous for a tenant to try and do that.” 

The article by Jeremiah Rhodes is extensively reported and gives great insights into what tenants can do in the face of unresponsive landlords and life-threatening heat