Hidden Pathways to Homelessness: Stories from Tenants Forced into Homelessness by Landlord Neglect
When landlords fail to maintain basic living standards, it is their tenants who are forced to pay the ultimate price by falling into homelessness. Below are a few firsthand stories that exemplify this horrifying trend and further highlight the need for better renter protections.
In 2021, Davielle McKinley wholeheartedly believed that she and her children had finally escaped homelessness. The family had been living in and out of their car and shuffling from one motel room to the next when they were approved to move into a unit in a complex at 5700 Hoover St. in Los Angeles. For the bargain price of $650 a month, they could rest with a roof over their heads and, as it turns out, very little else.
It didn’t take long for the downtrodden mom to discover the myriads of reasons her housing was affordable. Among them were:
- Roaches
- Feces
- Mold
- Poor plumbing
- Faulty electrical wiring
- Cramped conditions
- Leaky ceilings
The list goes on. Upon further investigation, it was clear that 5700 Hoover Street was not a unit of affordable housing. It was a complex in utter disrepair being used by multi-million-dollar corporations to warehouse human beings.
The Hoover Street Horror: When Substandard Housing Hides Behind Philanthropy
In a complaint published by the LA Times that initially appeared in Building and Safety records, one disgruntled tenant said, “I have been here 3 months, and the plumbing is in very poor condition. There has been feces backed up into the showers and hallways. Most recently the mold in the shower room and in my room was so bad I could not breathe. The handyman says the shower room is not an actual shower room, and there is really not much they can do.”
And it wasn’t just the shower room that was deceptive in its title. The complex itself wasn’t actually a complex. It was classified as a philanthropic institution, creating a nice little loophole for folks to provide substandard housing to people in dire need. As a philanthropic institution rather than an affordable housing community, the owner could curtail certain standards usually associated with rental properties.
Abhorrently, the current owner, who faces misdemeanor charges after creating a storm of child homelessness and exposing innocent renters to potentially harmful toxins, owns an LLC that is allegedly affiliated with LA-based Soul Housing. This organization is currently in charge of over 1,000 licensed boarding home beds for vulnerable tenants in the area. Meanwhile, the now notorious Hoover Street property was an overcrowded ramshackle that boasted one shower for 60 people. If this property says anything about the shelter beds, then it is clear that the problem with the complex is, well, pretty complex.
Hoover Street Residents Forced into Homelessness and Silenced
Here is an excellent example showing how landlords wield excessive power over the living situations of their tenants. It also shows how tenants often pay the price for things that landlords did wrong, such as not getting repairs, not paying the mortgage, not keeping utilities connected, and so forth.
When the city finally shut down the poorly managed property, they left residents in dire straits, with nowhere else to go. Many of them had been homeless before and were entering homelessness again, including McKinley, who expected Hoover Street to be a sigh of relief rather than another house of horrors.
In addition to being transitioned back into homelessness and housing instability, these Hoover Street residents, who struggled with limited incomes and various disabilities, were also forced to sign away their rights to make legal claims against the owners of the building. This is a shifty practice often used by corporate landlords to purchase their victims’ silence. In exchange for signing, they were issued meager relocation checks and a two-week stay in a local hotel, none of which would be enough to provide permanent solutions to their health and housing dilemmas.
The Power Dynamic: Landlords Literally Hold the Keys to their Tenant’s Livelihoods
“We need to address the power imbalance between landlords and renters,” said Sarah Saadian of The National Low Income Housing Coalition in an exclusive discussion with Invisible People. “If we strengthen and enforce renter protections that address the power imbalance, we could dramatically change our housing crisis and ensure that people aren’t likely to fall into homelessness because there’ll be a fuller safety net for them.”
As it stands, landlords continue to hold all the cards and the keys, so to speak, to their tenant’s livelihoods. They are quick to raise rental rates and slow to take on repairs. Routine maintenance is falling behind. Affordable housing has become a thing of the past. How can we move forward in an atmosphere such as this that prioritizes landlord profits over tenant lives?
Ask Your Legislators Why Housing Is Not a Human Right
Under current legislation, United States residents do not have the human right to housing. This is the real reason you see people living on the streets. The actual mental illness being exhibited is a societal sickness that makes us presume that homelessness is either acceptable or unavoidable.
The actual crime we’re all witnessing is our government’s refusal to make something so basic and necessary a civil liberty. Contact your legislators today and ask them why housing isn’t already a human right and what they are willing to do to change that.