PrintIf you are in a program that provides you with temporary housing and services while you look for permanent housing, you may have some rights similar to a tenant. For example, Massachusetts courts have established that people with certain government housing subsidies who live in transitional housing that also provide various services to assist people with securing permanent housing have the right to protection from unfair evictions. Just like any landlord, a landlord of such a transitional housing facility must use the court's eviction process to evict a tenant.14
However, people that live in other types of transitional housing, such as those who reside in Emergency Assistance shelters are not entitled to defend an eviction in court. For more information about your rights if you are in an Emergency Assistance shelter go to: homelessness
For more information about your rights if you live in a rooming house or Department of Mental Health Residential Housing, go to Chapter 15: Rooming Houses.
Endnotes
14 . Serreze v. YWCA of Western Mass., 30 Mass. App. Ct. 639, 643 (1991). (Someone who occupies premises under the Chapter 707 residential services program, 760 C.M.R. §38, should be considered a tenant and can be evicted only through summary process. The court further found that the occupant was a tenant and not a licensee.) Marvin Carr v. Friends of Homeless, Hampden Housing Court, 89-LE-3492-S (Abrashkin, J., April 3, 1990).
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