Nowhere to go: Family searches for new home after mid-pandemic eviction
Melissa French and her family were evicted from their Peterborough home so their landlord could renovate. Staff photo by Abbe Hamilton
Melissa French and her family found a new home about a month after being evicted. Staff photo by Abbe Hamilton
Melissa French, of Peterborough. Thursday, Feb. 4, 2021 Staff photo by Abbe Hamilton
Melissa French’s family never quite bounced back from the 2008 housing crisis.
They spent the past decade in tenuous housing situations before finding an affordable place to live in Peterborough in 2015. The stability allowed French to put down roots for the first time in years, even joining the Monadnock Area Transitional Shelter (MATS) board in 2018, but she was forced to face the region’s grim rental market once again this year when she received an eviction notice from their landlord, who wanted the house empty by April so he could renovate and sell.
Published: 2/24/2021 4:35:46 PM
Melissa French’s family never quite bounced back from the 2008 housing crisis. They spent the past decade in tenuous housing situations before finding an affordable place to live in Peterborough in 2015. The stability allowed French to put down roots for the first time in years, even joining the Monadnock Area Transitional Shelter (MATS) board in 2018, but she was forced to face the region’s grim rental market once again this year when she received an eviction notice from their landlord, who wanted the house empty by April so he could renovate and sell. It took an exhaustive monthlong search and crowdsourcing funds to move and pay down some credit card debt, but she finally secured a rental in Dublin to move to in April with her husband, three kids, and a cat. To French, her experience highlighted the serious consequences of the Monadnock region’s lack of affordable housing.
Monadnock Ledger-Transcript
Published: 12/23/2020 3:37:09 PM
Although there are ways for the seven cabins at the Walden Eco Village to get into compliance, former casita (or tiny house) resident Quinn Kelley acknowledged there was very little hope that he’d be able to return to his 140-square-foot rental. The nine similar rentals on site were not permitted, and don’t meet several criteria of the town’s building code for residences, including the 400-square-foot minimum for studio or one-bedroom residences. Casita renters paid about $445 a month to rent small rooms with propane heat and electricity, and used a communal building on site for kitchen, bathroom, shower, and laundry facilities. Officials disconnected the propane and electricity to all casitas last Wednesday after witnessing several safety hazards.