DEVELOP PGH
A tale of displacement: A year-long fight against a landlord shows the struggles facing renters forced to move.
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The long locs Linda Robinson lost by the fistfuls to chemotherapy five years ago had finally grown back when she lost her braids again, this time to a stressful eviction proceeding. “We, Black women, our crown is our hair,” said Robinson, 68, noting that in the Black community, hairstyle is a lifestyle.
Robinson added, “When you lose your crown, it’s devastating.”
Robinson scrambled to find housing before being forced out, even though her displacement was not due to a problem paying rent. And while her troubles began before COVID-19 shuttered the economy and prompted Gov. Tom Wolf to order a moratorium on evictions, her journey through the legal system is instructive to the tens of thousands of out-of-work Pennsylvanians that lawmakers and housing advocates expect will be swept up in a wave of evictions once filings resume. In an unprecedented move, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] on Sept. 4 issued a temporary moratorium that expires at the end of the year.