Rice Road and Boyd Lane intersect at the center of housing insecurity for Boone County.
Northeast Columbia — the region north of I-70 stretching east of Paris Road to Route Z — saw more eviction filings than any other area of the county since the start of 2020, according to data from Princeton University's Eviction Lab.
Eviction filings wedge renters deeper into housing situations that are often already limited or unstable — even when they don't result in the loss of a physical home.
One renter the Missourian spoke to is a single mother living paycheck to paycheck who borrowed money to keep her home after an eviction filing. Another woman's eviction caused her to lose the first home she was able to find after living in hotels.
For some in the northeast, evictions mean losing a home already plagued with issues like mold and pests.
The two census tracts that comprise the region have recorded a combined 665 eviction filings from the first week of 2020 to February 2023. Each tract has seen at least 3.5 times the number of evictions as a typical Boone County tract.
As of the 2010 census, both also tracts had a higher percentage of residents in rented units than the average Boone County tract. The housing data from the 2020 census is not yet available.
Roger Dyer, a housing attorney for Mid-Missouri Legal Services, said that many eviction cases end with an agreement between the tenant and landlord. In the end, though, the process often ends in the tenant leaving the property.
Parts of the region also are saddled with aging housing and infrastructure.
Trinston Jones grew up on Rice Road in the 1990s and moved back to the street as an adult in 2020. He said most of his neighbors have lived there for five years or less.
Neighbors leave "not because of the neighborhood, but because of the conditions," Jones said.
'Cycle of disrepair'
Swaths of northeast Columbia were built in the mid-twentieth century, with ranch or boxy split-level houses.
The northeast region was annexed into Columbia in the 1950s and '60s with those older neighborhoods having been built earlier under Boone County jurisdiction.
Karl Skala, former city councilperson for the Third Ward, described the Northeast as historically "less affluent" with "well-established neighborhoods."
Tim Teddy, community development director for the city, described parts of these neighborhoods as an "inherited landscape" of development from before the county adopted planning and building guidelines. On Rice Road, the pavement appears worn and the streets lack sidewalks or curbs.
Between older streets, subdivisions established in more recent decades boast newer building styles, sidewalks and better-maintained roads. These newer builds generally boast fresher siding, paved driveways and higher property values.
The newer neighborhoods feel like a patchwork of improved infrastructure, with the dividing line between Rice Road and Hanover Boulevard looking like a border between decades. The border is marked with the start of a sidewalk, fresher pavement and paint.
"It's always been a bit of a struggle to make sure that there was equity on the north side as much as there was on the south side," Skala said.
Skala said that lack of investment in the area has contributed to a "cycle of disrepair."
Jones attributes the disrepair to property owners not addressing issues before moving new tenants in. He remembers spending hours cleaning flooding in his parent's basement twenty years ago and said the landlord has closed off the basement to renters without addressing the water damage.
"When you don't have renter's history or the money to move to a different neighborhood, you deal with these slum landlords," Jones said.
Jones emphasized that the area's reputation for gun violence does not reflect his experience of the neighborhood, but higher turnover has changed the community.
He added that the addition of Hanover Boulevard since he grew up created traffic on Rice Road.
Now, kids can't play on the street as he did. As a child in the 1990s, his best friends lived across the street and their families stayed in the neighborhood for years at a time. He remembers a neighbor who let him and his friends play football in the field next to her house. He said she would bring them water and pray with them.
"You don't have that same community feel when there's always someone new — that 'it takes a village' feel," Jones said.
'Bugs in apartment, mold in house'
Stacey Hawkins was evicted from an apartment on Rice Road last spring for nonpayment of rent. She described the "fourplex" built out of a mid-century home as having substandard living conditions.
After living in hotels for about two years, it took Hawkins five months to secure the apartment. She told the Missourian the furnace didn't work during that first winter, but she trusted her landlord to fix it.
Eventually, the furnace became part of a pattern. Hawkins described a number of issues with the condition of the apartment that impacted the health of her and adult daughters Alexis Key and Audrey Key, who both lived in the apartment for at least short periods of time. She claimed they spent their own money on bleach, mold-killing paint and trips to the laundromat for towels they used to soak up standing water from flooding.
Hawkins and Alexis Key both claim that spores of black mold reached up the wall from the floor and burdened them with consistent illness and healthcare costs.
The property passed a city rental inspection in April 2021, but city inspection records for the property document a "furnace and water heater in disrepair" as well issues with the front door and smoke detectors in November 2021. Records show "mold, roaches and other bugs" in October 2022 — four months after Hawkins was evicted.
Audrey Key now lives around the corner on Boyd Lane. Key said the basement apartment was the only affordable option she would find that would accept her pets. Finding the unit felt like luck after Key lost her last apartment in a large complex to a fire.
Now, Key deals with mold and pests. She moved into the second bedroom after about four months because she found black mold along a baseboard. Key said frequent illness related to the mold strained her relationship with her employer.
The city's 2019 inspection records on the property — a raised-ranch duplex — document "Bugs in apartment, mold in house, filters are not being changed in HVAC." The document also states that the landlord at the time (who has since sold the property) threatened to sue tenants "if they told anyone" about the conditions.
Since her eviction in May 2022, Hawkins has been living with her brother in Boonville and is searching for another rental property.
Eviction filings are public information and a recent eviction on a potential tenant's record can severely limit their chances of finding a new lease. Jane Williams' team at Love Columbia works with clients on building eligibility as tenants, even after an eviction. Paying off past evictions in full helps a renter's chances, Williams said, but the eviction case itself remains public record. These expenses could include late fees, court expenses for the landlord and property damage alleged by landlords.
Conrad Hake connects clients to housing resources at Love Columbia. Hake said that landlords will sometimes file for eviction when a tenant is late on rent to get their attention, dropping the case when late rent comes in.
Hake and Williams said that larger property management companies tend to be more stringent with filing evictions when rent is past due. Smaller landlords tend to be more flexible, but there's no exact rule.
"What they're looking at as secondary income is dealing with a basic human need," Hake said. "There's just not an equivalency between the way a landlord is viewing the income stream they have available and the way the tenant is seeing this as their lifeline."
Hawkins notes that her experience shows how the eviction process "affects people in so many ways — in bad ways. It affects you having the ability to rent other places because landlords look at that," Hawkins said.
"If you do get a place to rent, most of the time it's the same or worse than the situation you were already in."
'It bound me to staying here'
Tammy Wright lives in a large modern apartment complex on Clark Lane at the border of the two census tracts. Wright managed to prevent an eviction there, but the lawsuit is still attached to her name.
After moving to Columbia in late 2021, Wright found her housing options limited. She hoped to rent a house with a yard as she had in St. Louis and send her daughters to Rock Bridge High School. Now, Wright feels like her low credit score bound her to the apartment she found in the Northeast. She said she secured the lease by paying an extra deposit to make up for her low credit rating.
Wright still wants to move to the south side of town, especially as her middle daughter heads to high school, but she feels stuck. She described gun violence in the area and dangerous road conditions — such as lack of light on Clark Lane — as similar to problems that made her want to leave St. Louis.
Not earning the same income she had before her move, Wright has been living paycheck to paycheck with about half her income going to rent. She feels like she's "starting back from the bottom" of her life.
Right before October's rent was due, Wright had to sink most of a paycheck into repairs for her car and transportation. Rent was late, and Wright's teenage daughter answered a knock at the door to receive a paper. The property managers had filed for eviction. Wright's daughter read her mother the court summons over the phone.
The company dropped the eviction suit after Wright paid the rent, late fees and court costs — including a $172 charge labeled "eviction expenses only," $35 of attorney fees and $170 of late fees.
She managed to evade the eviction before having to appear in court. Still, having the eviction case on her record has dashed Wright's hopes of moving. She expects that no one will want to rent to her for the next two years.
"It bound me to staying here and I don't want to be here," she said.
Since then, Wright gave up her search for other rentals and re-signed her lease — but her rent climbed $80 per month at the start of 2023. She's had late payments since, but not late enough to see another eviction suit. She said it's been hard, but she makes it work because she has to.
"Yes, this is a business. But at the same time, how can y'all help us work together so that we won't be homeless?" Wright said. "Or we won't be in a jam worrying about how we're going to take care of our kids?"
"When life happens, you still just gotta do it. And people are not understanding about that when it comes to housing."
Wright also had to borrow money from family to avoid the eviction. She still owes about $150, but her family members agreed to wait until Wright gets her tax refund.
Eli Hoff contributed to this report.
