The Cambridge City Council last night approved an order urgently requesting that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) take immediate action to stop mass eviction from the Rindge towers housing development that tenants and legal aid authorities say are racially motivated.
Almost 50 of the project's tenants, most of them Haitians who speak little English and have no knowledge of legal eviction rights and proceedings, have been served eviction notices in the last few months. The notices allege failure to pay rent, despite many tenants holding receipts showing that they have paid outstanding rent debts.
In addition, tenants say the building management assured several people facing eviction that they need not appear at court hearing on the matter, and when 22 of 38 such tenants failed to show up to defend themselves, the court ruled their evictions uncontested because they had defaulted.
The building's management also refused to accept back rent payments from several residents, according to Harvard Legal Aid attorney Jeff Purcell, who is representing five tenants.
Councilor Saundra Graham last night charged that three evictions in Rindge Towers and accompanying large rent hikes were a "deliberate attempt to force poor minority residents out of the building" and replace them with wealthier white tenants.
Graham added that the allegedly racially-motivated evictions were part of a "pattern that's going on across the country, but the urgency and scope" of this case makes it "particularly shocking."
All of the tenants facing evictions are members of minority groups, according to Terry Sutton, one of the few tenants whose eviction case was dismissed after she notified the court that the management "wouldn't accept my rent payments" but kept prosecuting her for non-payment.
"It must be planned," she added, because many of the non-minority tenants have also had difficulty meeting their payments but have not been served notice.
Sutton also said she was glad she decided to go to court despite the management's claim that "they would handle my complaint. If I hadn't gone anyway," she said. "I'd be out on the street by not."
Jason J. Timmons, executive vice president of Federal Management Co., Inc., a subsidiary of the building's owner, Schochet Associates, was absent from the hearing last night after being "taken with an untimely illness," according to a letter he sent to the council.
Schochet Associates are currently also developing a block in Central Square and rehabilitating an office building across from the towers, near the entrance to the MBTA Red line extension now under construction. Councilor David A. Wylie said last night that the owner of the company is probably trying to hold on to as much land in the area as possible, because when the subway extension opens, "his buildings will be on prime land and their value will skyrocket."
Proof
Most of the tenants from whom the management had claimed they never received rent say they paid by money order and thus do not have receipts to prove paymnent, said Steve Krasner of the Cambrige Tenants Association.
"These aren't just random non-paymnent evictions," he said, adding. "There's something very suspicious going on in these buildings."
And Janet Mac Millan, a representative of the Cambridge Tenants Union, said that HUD has the power to stop the evictions, "but nobody's interested in doing anything."
Section Eight
Nearly 80 percent of the tower's 500 apartment are subsidized through the federal government's "Section Eight" housing program, which allows low-income tenants to receive grants for up to 73 percent of their rents.
HUD is required to approve any rent hikes in the building and has the power to postpone any evictions until the agency conducts an investigation, according to Graham.
"HUD hasn't fulfilled its duties in this case," said Councilor David E. Sullivan. "They couldn't care less about the tenants, only about getting their investment back from the buildings," he added.
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