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This article was produced for ProPublica\u2019s Local Reporting Network in partnership with the Bangor Daily News. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.<\/p>\n
When Jasmin Belanger agreed to a plan to pay $750 in back rent, she had no idea how the decision would haunt her.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t until 10 months later, while apartment hunting to distance herself from an ex-boyfriend she said had abused her, that she discovered an eviction on her record. She hadn\u2019t ever been ordered to move out, having paid her back rent on schedule. But it turned out that the 2023 deal she made in court with her landlord to help her avoid eviction created a paper record that made it look like she had been evicted. That black mark kept her from finding a new place to live.<\/p>\n
Belanger\u2019s landlord was the Bangor public housing authority, which operates apartments for low-income residents. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development strongly encourages public housing authorities to offer so-called repayment agreements to tenants who have fallen behind on rent in order to help them stay in their homes. It recommends that authorities reach these deals before cases reach eviction court.<\/p>\n
But housing authorities have flexibility as to how to design and enforce such agreements. And the way these second-chance opportunities are executed in some parts of Maine \u2014 verbally in eviction courts with little judicial oversight \u2014 has come back to harm even tenants who meet every term of their deals.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s because judges here don\u2019t pause eviction cases even when tenants and housing authorities reach agreements. In fact, those judges often grant landlords possession of properties at the time that repayment deals are made \u2014 expediting the process of kicking out tenants who violate the agreements.<\/p>\n
Some states have taken steps to prevent this, requiring landlords to return to court to evict tenants who don\u2019t fulfill the terms of their repayment plans. Housing authorities also could choose to pause or close eviction cases if repayment agreements are made in court, but they rarely do so in Maine, said Erica Veazey, an attorney with Pine Tree Legal Assistance, a legal aid group based in Portland that represents low-income tenants throughout the state.<\/p>\n
Most housing authorities in Maine, including Bangor\u2019s, told the Bangor Daily News and ProPublica that they follow HUD\u2019s guidance and try to reach agreements with tenants outside of courts. But court records show that\u2019s not always true in Bangor, the state\u2019s second-largest housing authority. There, 54 tenants had repayment agreements made in court, according to the newsrooms\u2019 examination of eviction filings between 2019 and 2024. All 54 tenants ended up with eviction judgments in court records, including those who may have repaid their debts. (If a repayment agreement was made outside of court, it would not appear in any official record.)<\/p>\n
Maine\u2019s court system is one of the last in the country to rely on paper records, making a holistic accounting of such ghost evictions difficult. But the Bangor cases show for the first time how these repayment agreements can backfire for tenants against the intent of the HUD guidance.<\/p>\n
Presented with these findings, Mike Myatt, executive director of Bangor\u2019s housing authority, said he did not know public housing residents would automatically end up with evictions on their records if they entered into repayment agreements in court.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t quite understand or know how those processes may be changed,\u201d Myatt said, \u201cbut we would certainly lead an effort or be part of an effort that would change those rules.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mike Myatt, executive director of Bangor\u2019s housing authority. He said he did not know that public housing residents would automatically end up with evictions on their records if they entered into repayment agreements in court.<\/span><\/p>\n HUD, during President Donald Trump\u2019s first term, began urging housing authorities to reach repayment agreements before taking tenants to eviction court in July 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic. In January, just before President Joe Biden left office, the agency reemphasized that guidance as part of new safeguards for public housing tenants; that doesn\u2019t include a recommendation about whether evictions should be included on tenants\u2019 records as part of such deals.<\/p>\n \u201cHUD\u2019s intent seems pretty clear: Eviction filing should be a last resort for housing authorities and not essentially a way to strong-arm tenants into agreeing to whatever terms you want to put them under,\u201d said Hannah Adams, a senior attorney at the National Housing Law Project, a nonprofit legal advocacy center for low-income tenants and homeowners. She practices in Louisiana, where judges regularly sign off on repayment agreements without entering an eviction judgment.<\/p>\n Of the more than three dozen tenants contacted by the Bangor Daily News and ProPublica, only Belanger agreed to publicly share her experience about the consequences of having an eviction on her record.<\/p>\n An eviction, even one that never actually happened, can haunt a person\u2019s financial record for years, visible to lenders and prospective landlords and hurting opportunities to obtain credit or rent a home, Adams said.<\/p>\n Asked to comment on a range of questions, including the effect of housing authorities deviating from federal guidance, HUD spokesperson Kasey Lovett issued a statement saying the Trump administration is reviewing all rules finalized during the last administration.<\/p>\n \u201cMany artificially raised the cost of housing and administration of HUD programs,\u201d Lovett said. \u201cHUD is looking into this specific rule and considering necessary options to revise or remove this burden.\u201d<\/p>\n The agency did not respond to follow-up questions about whether or how it would revise the guidance about repayment agreements.<\/p>\n Belanger said she fell behind on her rent in 2023 because she was paying to stay at a hotel to live away from her ex. She had also lost income because she was no longer showing up regularly to her cosmetology job due to the stress.<\/p>\n An eviction notice delivered to her door in May 2023 prompted her to meet with a financial counselor at the Bangor housing authority. The counselor advised her to seek a repayment plan in order to remain in her apartment and avoid eviction court, Belanger said. But the housing authority initially refused, telling her that she could only get a repayment plan in court, according to a text message from a housing authority representative to Belanger. The text message appears to contradict Myatt\u2019s characterization of his agency\u2019s standard practice.<\/p>\n Myatt would not explain why Belanger was not allowed to enter into an agreement before court, saying he could not speak about individual eviction cases even with Belanger\u2019s permission.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery eviction case is unique and has different circumstances,\u201d he said. \u201cWe go above and beyond to help people stay in their housing.\u201d<\/p>\n When her court date arrived two months later in July, Belanger said the process moved quickly. The judge called her name, and she was ushered to a conference room off the courthouse hallway where the housing authority\u2019s attorney, Joseph Bethony, verbally offered her a deal: She could remain in her apartment if she paid her back rent. She said he never mentioned anything about an eviction going on her record. Bethony declined to comment, referring the Bangor Daily News and ProPublica to Myatt. There is no guidance on what housing authority attorneys are supposed to tell tenants when making repayment agreements, Myatt said.<\/p>\n \u201cOur goal is to keep families housed and collect the very important rent we need to pay our expenses,\u201d Myatt said. \u201cOur counsel works with everyone to accomplish that goal.\u201d<\/p>\n Belanger, who did not have an attorney, said she agreed to the repayment plan without seeing it in writing.<\/p>\n Maine judges typically do not review repayment agreements made in eviction court between housing authorities and tenants.<\/span><\/p>\n She returned to the courtroom, where a judge asked if she had reached an agreement with the housing authority. She responded yes and the hearing ended, Belanger said. She believed the deal had been simple: Pay what she owed, make the payments on time and the housing authority would let her stay.<\/p>\n The repayment agreements are drawn up by attorneys for the housing authority and are not typically reviewed by judges, according to Barbara Cardone, a spokesperson for the Maine Judicial Branch. Cardone said the court\u2019s authority in eviction cases is limited to determining whether the landlord can take possession of the property.<\/p>\n The housing authority said it does not give tenants the agreements to sign in court. After the hearing, the agency sends a letter to the tenant outlining the repayment agreement and terms of the court ruling. Myatt said he does not review the agreements.<\/p>\n The copy of the agreement that Belanger eventually received was dated seven days after the court hearing and was signed by Bethony but not Belanger, according to the document reviewed by the Bangor Daily News and ProPublica. The one-page document said Belanger had agreed that the judge ruled in favor of the housing authority, which would have the power to immediately evict her if she does not pay her rent \u2014 and back rent \u2014 on time over the next year.<\/p>\n She would not understand the implications until March 2024, while trying to move away from her ex, when a prospective landlord informed her she would not get the apartment because an eviction judgment had been entered against her in court. Belanger even had a reference letter from the housing authority saying that she had fulfilled her repayment agreement and her previous struggles paying rent \u201cwere due to the monies she has had to spend staying away from her apartment to be safe,\u201d according to an email reviewed by the Bangor Daily News and ProPublica.<\/p>\n \u201cI had paid off all of my debt,\u201d Belanger said in an interview. \u201cI would have fought this if I had known this was a consequence.\u201d<\/p>\n Myatt, head of the Bangor housing authority, said he trains his staff to use court-based agreements as a last resort. He said tenants should not be punished with eviction records if they\u2019ve fulfilled their agreements.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the obligations are met,\u201d he said, \u201cthe eviction should be lifted.\u201d There is currently no way to expunge an eviction record in Maine.<\/p>\n A housing complex managed by the Bangor public housing authority. It is the state\u2019s second-largest housing authority.<\/span><\/p>\n Unlike in Maine, other places across the country have set up more guardrails around repayment agreements and evictions. Massachusetts requires all repayment agreements made in court to be in writing and approved by judicial officials. In addition, landlords can\u2019t automatically evict tenants who don\u2019t abide by their agreements; they must return to court to prove tenants did not uphold their side of the deals before obtaining enforceable eviction orders.<\/p>\n In SeaTac, a Seattle suburb, local ordinances require eviction proceedings to stop in court if a tenant and landlord agree to a repayment agreement, so tenants do not wind up with evictions on their records. In Portland, Oregon, the public housing authority allows residents to sign repayment agreements at any point before eviction hearings.<\/p>\n Nicole Summers, an associate professor at Georgetown Law who has extensively studied eviction settlements, refers to repayment agreements as \u201ccivil probation.\u201d That\u2019s because these agreements often include rules and conditions governing tenants\u2019 behavior well beyond paying off back rent.<\/p>\n In Maine, Veazey said that under some agreements, violating public housing rules by failing to mow your lawn or smoking too close to the building can lead to a tenant\u2019s forced removal without having to return to court for an eviction order.<\/p>\n In Presque Isle, the housing authority gave a public housing resident 48 hours to pack up and leave after she missed a rent payment. The woman, featured in a story by the Bangor Daily News and ProPublica in December, was homeless for three years after violating the repayment plan she had made in court. When there is no repayment agreement in place, landlords normally must provide tenants 30 days\u2019 notice for most lease violations before filing eviction cases in court.<\/p>\n \n The USDA Wouldn\u2019t Let Her Give Up Her House When She Couldn\u2019t Pay Her Mortgage. Instead, It Crushed Her With Debt.<\/strong>\n <\/p>\n Belanger\u2019s agreement in Bangor featured a similar trigger for eviction. She wasn\u2019t just required to pay what she owed, she also had to make future rent payments on time for 12 months.<\/p>\n In the two years since Belanger agreed to the repayment deal in court, she said she has felt trapped.<\/p>\n Despite a positive reference from the Bangor housing authority\u2019s director of property management, landlord after landlord rejected her rental application because of the eviction. It took the single mother of a toddler nine months to get into another apartment far away from her ex, who was out on bail after being arrested for allegedly beating and threatening to kill her. (He was later found not guilty after a trial.)<\/p>\n Belanger said she\u2019s afraid to move again because the paper eviction hasn\u2019t gone away.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m probably still going to have this hassle coming along with me wherever I go.\u201d<\/p>\n This story was supported in part by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.<\/p>\n Mariam Elba of ProPublica and Christina Wallace contributed research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This article was produced for ProPublica\u2019s Local Reporting Network in partnership with the Bangor Daily News. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published. When Jasmin Belanger agreed to a plan to pay $750 in back rent, she had no idea how the decision would haunt her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14159,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[3568,7809,7810,7808,247,3440,3691],"class_list":{"0":"post-14158","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-deals","9":"tag-evicted","10":"tag-fulfilling","11":"tag-maine","12":"tag-propublica","13":"tag-renters","14":"tag-repayment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n Credit: <\/span>
\n Linda Coan O\u2019Kresik\/BDN
\n <\/span><\/p>\nPerils of Court-Based Deals<\/h3>\n
\n Credit: <\/span>
\n Linda Coan O\u2019Kresik\/BDN
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\n Credit: <\/span>
\n Linda Coan O\u2019Kresik\/BDN
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