The Fight Against Evictions Moves to the Courts

The US affordable housing crisis has not spared the Land of Enchantment. Rents are skyrocketing in Albuquerque, New Mexico’s largest city, rising nearly 40% since March 2020, according to Apartment List. In nearby Santa Fe, the average two-bedroom apartment goes for $1,400, comparable to rents in larger and more exclusive metros. New Mexico’s eviction moratorium expired in April, allowing landlords to force out tenants who can’t keep up with rising costs.

But renters struggling in Albuquerque and other places across the state have a powerful new ally against evictions: the courts.

The state supreme court in New Mexico — not a mayor or state senator or governor, but the judiciary — is working to curb evictions across the state. Since the start of the pandemic, the court has moved to protect vulnerable tenants, and more recently, to ensure that displacement doesn’t return to high levels seen across the state before pandemic rent protections arrived. To keep landlords from flooding courthouses once the ban was lifted, in February the New Mexico State Supreme Court launched an eviction diversion program, an effort to bring landlords and tenants together to resolve their disputes and to connect renters with resources to bring their accounts up to good standing.

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