Eviction Companies Pay the Homeless Illegally Low Wages to Put People on the Street

[mahatmakanejeeves]

I'm clearing out old newspapers.

Eviction Companies Pay the Homeless Illegally Low Wages to Put People on the Street

"We thought that this had been resolved years and years ago."

Elizabeth Flock — Feb 23, 2017 6 AM

It is a bitter cold morning in November, and the sun is just creeping up over the horizon. But for over an hour already, two unmarked vans have been idling or parked outside S.O.M.E. (So Others Might Eat), a longtime nonprofit that feeds D.C.’s homeless. These are the eviction company vans, known as “trucks,” and they are waiting for cheap, off-the-books labor.

Years of experience tells them they can get it at S.O.M.E., where men who sleep on the street or in the shelter congregate in the mornings. These men, and the occasional woman, are always looking to make a few dollars, and the eviction companies know the homeless will accept below the minimum wage of $11.50—accept even $7 total to work an eviction, which can take a few hours or most of a day. And the companies also know that, because they are homeless, these men mostly will not complain, even if the job is to make others homeless.
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In D.C., after a landlord successfully gets a writ of restitution to evict a tenant, he or she must hire an eviction crew to haul the tenant’s belongings to the curb. For the sake of speed—and because in D.C. evictions are overseen by the U.S. Marshals Service, which has other jobs to do—that crew must be large enough to quickly carry out the eviction. The marshals require a crew of 25 people for a single-family home, 20 for a two-bedroom apartment, and 15 for a one bedroom. Enter D.C.’s eviction companies, which are paid by landlords to show up with the appropriate-sized crew.
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D.C.’s eviction trucks have been showing up outside S.O.M.E. to find labor since at least 1999, when City Paper first published a story about how homeless people were being employed to make others homeless. Back then, eviction companies even went inside the nonprofit’s cafeteria to recruit, but S.O.M.E. put an end to that practice. ...And since at least 2006, these companies have been paying their homeless day laborers below minimum wage. That year, the homeless newspaper Street Sense published an expose of their practices, which sparked a class-action lawsuit brought by a group of homeless and formerly homeless men who worked the trucks. International law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton represented the men, who alleged that six eviction companies in D.C. were paying below the minimum wage, and were even colluding to do so. Three of the companies settled before the court made its findings, including one that settled and then disappeared without making payment. In 2010, the court ordered that the remaining three companies start paying at least the minimum wage and also start maintaining wage records.
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For those seeking emergency shelter, D.C.’s shelter hotline can be reached at 202-399-7093 or by dialing 211. Other shelters include:

The Central Union Mission | 65 Massachusetts Ave NW | [phone]
Community for Creative Non-Violence | 425 2nd St NW, Washington | [phone]
Coalition for the Homeless, with multiple locations | [phone]
Luther Place Night Shelter (for women) | 1226 Vermont Ave NW, No. 4 | [phone]

[JudyM]

1. Reprehensible. The real estate industry has so many angles of the ugly side of humanity.