Kathryn Jacob, Executive Directior, Housing Crisis Center

Kathryn Jacob, Executive Director, Housing Crisis Center

Housing Crisis Center works to prevent homelessness and stabilize families, the elderly, and the disabled in decent, affordable, and permanent housing. HCC empowers these groups to solve their own housing problems in the future by providing free legal services for Dallas County residents, short- and long-term transitional shelter as well as permanent supportive housing and emergency financial assistance.

The nation’s deepest post-WWII economic recession –lately being called “The Great Recession”– has had rippling effects throughout North Texas communities.

But few communities are affected as intensely as the working poor. To quote an old and sometimes overused cliché, when the country catches a cold, the poor get the flu.

The Housing Crisis Center works to ease the struggles of the working poor every day.  Our staff aims to prevent homelessness by using a diverse menu of services, including emergency financial assistance for rent and utilities, legal services for housing issues, transitional housing services, and permanent supportive housing. 

One issue we’ve unfortunately seen a lot of recently is foreclosure.  Foreclosure is when an individual or family cannot make their mortgage payments on a property and must surrender it to the lender for auction in lieu of payment. The property is then auctioned so that the lender may seek to recover his or her investment. As a result, families lose their homes.  This is a scary and growing problem many North Texas families are experiencing.

What is even more frightening is when a renter is doing fine – paying rent, keeping the lights on, feeding the kids – but the landlord is foreclosed upon, meaning the landlord can’t pay the mortgage on the apartment property and their lender ends up taking back the property.

This has become a particularly troubling issue for the working poor, who are mostly renters and often can’t afford the disruption or the expense of having to move.  In these situations, renters may feel out of control because they were doing their part in properly paying rent on time.  What are a renter’s rights in this situation?

As of May 2009, the federal government made several changes that protect renters in cases where their landlord has been foreclosed on, including:

• A property’s new owners must honor all leases, assuming they were bonafide leases. 
• If the new owner utilizes the property as his or her primary residence, the new owner doesn’t have to honor the leases, but must give at least 90 days to the renters to vacate the property.  This is the case even if the renter was on a month-to-month lease or had less than 90 days left on the lease before expiring.
• Tenants must continue to pay rent and honor the lease agreement if available as an option.

Foreclosure, eviction, and other tenants’ rights issues can be complicated and confusing experiences.  HCC offers free counseling by phone and a free legal clinic every Wednesday night at our Dallas offices. Come early, sessions have been filling quickly.

Learn more about Housing Crisis Center’s free services here. The Texas Young Lawyers Association and State Bar of Texas has put together a helpful guide to renter’s rights in Texas .  The Texas Tenants’ Association, a nonprofit group that helps tenants to protect their rights, preserve their homes, improve their living conditions and enhance the quality of life in their communities, also offers free legal help.  

To identify available resources in your community, dial 2-1-1 or go online to 211 Texas, the statewide referral network for health and human services.  Learn more from the 2-1-1 page of KERA’s Economy Web site.