Lawmakers in Idaho passed in March a set of new renter protections to support tenants with a history of eviction by creating a pathway to safe, stable, and affordable housing free from unjust and discriminatory barriers. Under the law, which was codified through “Senate Bill 1327,” tenants with dismissed eviction filings will automatically have their eviction records shielded from public view after three years, making their record inaccessible to all third-party entities, including credit screening companies. Known commonly as an “eviction record sealing” law, Idaho’s new law requires tenants to satisfy two additional conditions before qualifying for automatic sealing: their case must have been dismissed, and there must be no appeals pending on the case. With the passage of the new law, Idaho joins 13 states, including the District of Columbia, that have enacted eviction record sealing and/or expungement laws.
The campaign to enact eviction record sealing protections for tenants in Idaho was a bipartisan effort. Led by Senators Ali Rabe (D-Boise) and Chris Trakel (R-Caldwell), as well as Representative Clay Handy (R-Burley), “Senate Bill 1327” seeks to address a growing eviction crisis across the state. Before the COVID-19 pandemic started in 2020, the state recorded 2,922 eviction filings in 2019. Despite eviction rates decreasing pointedly during the pandemic due to federal and state level eviction moratoriums and emergency rental assistance being available to renters, by the last quarter of 2022, eviction rates had begun to rise once the state’s pandemic-era programs were rolled back or had been depleted, resulting in eviction filing rates that exceeded pre-pandemic levels. In 2023, eviction filings were reported as being 44% higher than they were the year prior, with 3,354 evictions reported that same year. The eviction process in Idaho is a fast-moving one as well, as landlords and property owners can evict a tenant from their home after a three-day notice period.
Evictions can be caused by many verifiable or explicitly defined reasons, though the most common cause of eviction for renters nationwide – and especially for renters in Idaho – is nonpayment of rent. In 2024, as wages remain stagnant, rental costs continue to rise, and the country continues to face an increasing shortage of affordable housing for low-income and extremely low-income renters, the persistent threat of housing unaffordability has left millions of renters at an increased risk of housing instability. Tenants who are unable to make their scheduled rental payments as a result face the greatest threat of eviction. In Idaho, housing unaffordability is common, as more than half of all renters in the state are reported as being “cost-burdened,” or paying more than 30% of their income towards rent. As a result, housing advocates in Boise noted that in 2023, 90% of eviction filings that were reported for the area were due to nonpayment of rent – a number that will only remain steady due to the rising cost of being a renter today.
Evictions can have lasting and sometimes permanent consequences for individuals. Even in cases where a tenant is found not to be “at-fault” during the legal eviction process, the mere presence of an eviction on a tenant’s public record can have detrimental impacts on their effort to seek out new housing opportunities for themselves and their families. At the outset of a tenant’s housing search, the often-mandatory process of acquiring a tenant screening report can result in an automatic denial of a tenant’s rental application. While tenant screening reports include information on a tenant’s prior eviction history, the information can be outdated or misleading and usually does not detail the exact cause of the tenant’s eviction. The denial of a prospective renter from a unit limits the housing options available to a tenant. For the lowest-income tenants, who must contend with an already limited number of housing options that are available based on budgetary constraints, the presence of a past eviction can lead tenants into undesirable housing conditions, which over the long-term can have detrimental impacts on access to reliable transportation, quality schools, and new work opportunities.
Eviction record sealing laws are a crucial tool used to mitigate the harmful consequences of an eviction record. When eviction record sealing laws are implemented, the law mandates restrictions on who can access the tenant’s public record once hidden from public view. In states like Arizona, for example, an eviction record sealing law passed in 2022 (under “House Bill 2485”) stipulates that the only party allowed to view a tenant’s record once it has been sealed is the tenant. This means that any third party who might use a tenant’s record to deny them housing is prohibited from accessing the eviction record. A common component of eviction record sealing protections used to enforce such measures is to prohibit the sale of any eviction data to background or credit screening companies that gather information on tenants and sell it to landlords and property owners.
Under “Senate Bill 1327,” which will go into effect in July 2024, any dismissed eviction filing that occurs on or after January 1, 2025, will be eligible to be sealed from public view. As noted, there are three requirements that a tenant must meet before becoming eligible for automatic sealing. To qualify for protections under the law, a tenant must first certify that they satisfy the judgement of the eviction, especially as it relates to nonpayment of rent, meaning that a tenant must pay back any past due rent once they receive an eviction notice and wait for the mandatory three-year period before their records can be hidden from public viewing.
The campaign to secure eviction record sealing protections in Idaho was supported by both landlords and tenants, with housing advocacy groups such as the Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy and the Idaho Asset Building Network supporting the passage of the bill. “Renters in Idaho are facing significant challenges to finding affordable and available places to live, and we know that families with children, people with disabilities, the elderly, and Idahoans of color are being hit the hardest,” said Kendra Knighten, director of the Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy. “The passage of “Senate Bill 1327” is an important and significant step toward removing some of those barriers and ensuring every Idahoan has an affordable place to live.”
The Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy previously served as a cohort member of NLIHC’s End Rental Arrears to Stop Evictions (ERASE) project, a national campaign that ran from 2021 to 2023 to ensure that the emergency rental assistance aid provided by Congress reached the lowest-income and most marginalized renters equitably and efficiently.
Learn more about Idaho’s new bill at: https://legiscan.com/ID/text/S1327
Learn more about the work of the Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy at: https://idahofiscal.org/