'No One Leaves': A Grass-Roots Case Study

Image Credit: Kelly Creedon 

This (belated) Valentine's Day, we are highlighting a group of law students, housing advocates, and community organizers in the Boston area who spread their love for fair housing and tenants' rights through a grass-roots legal information campaign. On most weekend mornings during the last three years, volunteers from Harvard Law School's Project No One Leaves, Boston College Law School's Community and Economic Development Project, and other students from across Massachusetts can be seen canvassing  Project No One Leaves, a collaboration between City Life/Vide Urbana, Harvard and Boston College Law School students, and other students across Massachusetts, has coordinated numerous canvassing efforts in the City of Boston and surrounding neighborhoods in Middlesex and Norfolk Counties. Project leaders compile a database of recently foreclosed homes recorded in the public record and aim to establish contact with owners in default within three to four weeks, before banks and predatory groups can come knocking on the door. The organization's volunteers provide defaulting owners with information about pro bono legal representation and monthly City Life meetings in which residents of foreclosed properties can share grievances, ideas, and strategies to preserve their homes, avoid the auction block, and become current once again. 

Thus far, the organization's efforts have resulted in several dozen success stories of owners avoiding the chopping block at auction or asserting their rights of redemption. The success of the program's Greater Boston operations have spread across Massachusetts, with regular canvassing and advocacy meetings in cities like Springfield. In recent months, the project has turned its focus towards tenants whose landlords are facing foreclosure. Oftentimes, these tenants are unaware of their landlords' financial woes and are unlawfully forced out of their units before the end of their lease. Project No One Leaves seeks to provide consultation to these disenfranchised tenants, explaining their protections under federal Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act of 2009, which states that certain residential leases may remain valid even after a foreclosure and protects residential leases entered into before "the notice of foreclosure", defined as the final Notice of Trustee Sale by the Act's amendment. See Public Law 111-22. The work of Project No One Leaves (and other similar groups) has shed light on the concerns and marginalization of tenants who are caught off guard by the foreclosure of their residential rental unit and are unequipped to assert their legal rights against banks and new owners. 

It may not be wrapped in red and pink or dipped in milk chocolate, but a little guidance, representation, and a showing of solidarity may be the best way for fair housing advocates to show how much they truly care.