A recent article in Housing Policy Debate, “The Benefits and Limitations of Tenant Rights Education: A Case Study of Eviction Prevention Workshops in San Diego, California,” examined the impact of eviction prevention education workshops on renters’ understanding of rights and resources. The researchers found that workshop attendees were more likely than non-attendees to correctly answer questions about limits to rent increases, the eviction process and timeline, how to handle unresponsive landlords, and resources or services available to tenants.
Led by the Legal Aid Society of San Diego, the Eviction Prevention Workshop offers renter education about general laws and policies that govern the tenant-landlord relationship. To evaluate the impact of the workshops on attendees understanding of their rights and resources, the researchers attended 82 workshops between April 2022 to June 2023 and collected data through 98 follow-up interviews with 71 renters who attended workshops (attendees) and 27 renters who did not attend workshops (non-attendees).
At least 40% of workshop attendees provided correct answers to all seven questions in the follow-up interviews. More than 60% of attendees provided correct answers for at least four questions. Incorrect responses were highest for questions about whether there were limitations on rent increases, what to do if a landlord refuses to fix a problem in their home, and organizations that help with eviction.
Tenants who attended workshops were more likely to answer questions correctly than tenants who did not attend. Nearly 80% of attendees correctly identified a written notice as the first step for a landlord to initiate an eviction and 65% answered correctly when asked whether it was true (or false) that they had five days to respond to the notice. In comparison, only about half of non-attendees answered both questions correctly. More than 40% of attendees answered the question about limits to rent increases correctly, compared to only 9% of non-attendees. Further, the percentage of attendees who correctly identified legal organizations that could help with eviction was nearly double for attendees (41%) compared to non-attendees (22%).
Interviews also revealed other outcomes from the workshops. Nearly two out of three workshop attendees expressed that the workshop alleviated some of their housing-related stress. They attributed this to learning about their rights, the importance of documenting communication and payments, problem-solving strategies, and available tools and resources. Five attendees were motivated to join tenant advocacy or organizing organizations. While the workshop did not provide direct legal assistance, many tenants were able to learn about or receive a warm hand-off to legal resources that could help with their individual housing situations. However, tenants in crisis were frustrated by the lack of immediate help or the inability for the workshop to address their individual situation. Other tenants left the workshop with increased stress, frustrations, or hopelessness about systematic challenges facing renters including landlord-tenant power imbalances.
The authors conclude that the Eviction Prevention Workshop had clear benefits for most tenants who participated in the study. They suggest that one major strength of the Eviction Prevention Workshop is its deep reliance on community-based organizations (CBOs) to recruit and host workshops, particularly for CBOs that serve harder-to-reach populations such as immigrants and refugees. They also discuss the success of some CBO outreach to schools and churches to reach tenants who are not engaged with CBOs but would still benefit from tenant education. The authors suggest that attendees would benefit more from workshops that directly offer other displacement prevention services such as tenant organizing and on-site legal help. Finally, because workshops and legal assistance do not address the increased costs of rental housing, they emphasize the need for policies such as rent limits and rental assistance to support housing stability.
Read the report at: https://bit.ly/3D0ojKM.