Corporate landlords' actions affect tenants' health, report says

Actions by corporate landlords creating harmful housing conditions affect the health of tenants and deepens racial and health inequities in Latino and Black communities, according to a study by Human Impact Partners.

Miriam de Santiago says she worries about the rent on her home every day, doing the math to make sure she can meet her obligations without compromising the health of her son, who has epilepsy.

“Epilepsy medication costs between $780 and $1,000 [a month], and we have to have it at home and at school. With the rent increases, I have to decide which medicine to request first, see which one is more urgent and find a balance,” De Santiago said in an interview.

Her family has lived with her two teenage children in the Boulder Meadows Mobile Home Park community in Boulder, Colorado, for 16 years. In 2020, a corporation bought the property where the community is located. Before then, she said, her rent would go up about $10 or $15 a year, but in 2020, she said, her rent went up by $70, with subsequent increases of up to $35 a year and this year up by $45. 

“We have suffered from anxiety and depression. And we’ve seen cases of people not sleeping and even losing their hair because they’re thinking that at some point they’re going to get a knock on the door and be told they have to leave,” De Santiago, who is with 9 to 5 Colorado, a nonprofit group that focuses on economic justice, said about the situation in her community. Her landlord did not respond to a request for comment.

De Santiago and her family’s experiences following rent increases were in a report by Human Impact Partners, or HIP, a nonprofit organization focused on researching public health and social justice issues. The study denounced how practices of corporate landlords are affecting the health of tenants in some areas of the U.S. According to HIP, a Census Bureau Rental Housing Finance Survey found that about 45% of rental housing units are owned by “institutional investors,” a category that includes landlords using corporate structures like LLPs, LPs, LLCs, real estate investment trusts and real estate corporations.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/corporate-landlords-affect-tenants-health-report-rcna161624

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