If you are the slightest bit business-minded, you might well imagine that in the housing rental business, evictions are nothing but a particular kind of business expense — those losses that might be expected from removing a tenant (for whatever reason) and not immediately being able to put a new paying customer in place. Occasionally, as well, a thriving housing rental business might need to write off repairs or refurbishment to a now-empty apartment in order to maximize its re-rental value.
When one of Boston’s largest private enterprise housing owners and managers began to participate last year in a pandemic housing security task force, they discovered that they were actually THE largest private enterprise housing owner and manager in the city. And naturally you might expect that they had a costing handle on the considerable numbers of evictions they were processing while running their business. Didn’t they?
Unh . . . no.
In fact, though they knew (a.k.a. believed) that evictions were a fact of life, they didn’t track them, evaluate their impact on the business, or give any thought to how eviction costs might be minimized.
And here’s the kicker: when they began to explore the efficient management of eviction costs, it became apparent that evictions did not necessarily have to happen at all. And for that particular business there have been no evictions for non-payment of rent since early 2020.
Is there something in their discoveries that all landlords can profit from? Read a lengthy exploration of this question in Shelterforce: How One of Boston’s Top Evictors Changed Its Ways
