An article published in the Russell Sage Foundation of Social Sciences, “Protecting the Most Vulnerable: Policy Response and Eviction Filing Patterns during the COVID-19 Pandemic,” examines the efficacy of policy interventions to prevent mass eviction filings during the pandemic. During the pandemic, policymakers attempted to prevent mass evictions by implementing eviction moratoriums and making emergency rental assistance available. Other less targeted policies, such as expanded unemployment insurance and stimulus payments, were also essential in preventing housing instability for renters. The authors find that eviction filing rates were 57.6% lower than expected in 2020 and 2021. The decrease in filings was most significant in low-income and Black neighborhoods, which had the greatest number of filings before the pandemic.
The authors relied on data collected through the Eviction Lab’s “Eviction Tracking System,” a tool that monitors eviction filings in 31 cities throughout the U.S. To capture the variation within cities, they assigned all filings to their respective census tract. This allowed the authors to analyze the reduction of filings based on neighborhood characteristics, such as median household income and racial demographics. Finally, they used a predictive algorithm to assess the gender and race-ethnicity of defendants to assess trends in filing at the individual level.
The authors found that there was a reduction of approximately 800,000 (or 57.6%) eviction filings between January 2020 and December 2021 as compared to the historical average. The most dramatic reductions took place in the beginning months of the pandemic. For instance, in April 2020, the eviction rate was 8.6% of the historical average. By the fall of 2020, even with the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) eviction moratorium in place, the filing rate had climbed to 50% of the historical average.
The authors noted significant variation in eviction filing rates between cities, from 78.2% of the historical average in Las Vegas to 15.2% in Austin. They attributed this variation to discrepancies in how county courts interpreted and applied federal eviction moratoriums, coupled with the introduction of additional protections at the state or local levels. Implementing a strong moratorium at the state or local level was associated with a reduction of 28.7 percentage points in filing rate as compared to the historical average. The repeal of a strong moratorium was associated with a 43.6 percentage point increase in eviction filings. All 10 cities with the lowest relative eviction filings had strong eviction moratoriums in place during the early stages of the pandemic, and eight of these cities continued to maintain these protections until at least the summer of 2020. Conversely, the cities with the highest relative filing rates ended their state and local protections earlier, with only Las Vegas having a strong protection in place after August 2020. This led to unequal protection of similarly situated renters throughout the country.
The authors also explored filing patterns at the neighborhood level. Reductions in filing rates were most pronounced in neighborhoods with historically high filing rates. About 476,000 (60%) of prevented evictions were in the top one-fifth of neighborhoods with the highest eviction rates. During a typical year, more than one in six people in these neighborhoods would face an eviction filing, but the rate was reduced to one in 12 people during the study period.
In examining racial and ethnic disparities, the authors found that eviction filings decreased by 56.0% in the typical majority-Black neighborhood compared to 51.2% in majority-white neighborhoods, 49.9% in majority-Latino neighborhoods, and 51.3% in neighborhoods without a racial-ethnic majority. While this narrowed the disparities in eviction filing rates, eviction filing rates were still 3.5% higher in majority-Black neighborhoods than in majority-white neighborhoods. Further, the filing rate in majority-Black neighborhoods during the pandemic was still 1.6% higher than the pre-pandemic filing rate in majority-white neighborhoods. At the individual level, the authors found that Black women saw the greatest reduction in filing rates, with one in 27 facing an eviction in a typical year as compared to one in 12 during the pandemic.
The authors argue that eviction moratoriums ultimately played an essential role in reducing eviction filings during the pandemic, and that this experience demonstrates that significantly reducing eviction filings is a feasible goal for public policy. They further suggest that additional research on emergency rental assistance programs is warranted, given that rental assistance is a more politically feasible policy solution than moratorium over the long term.
Read the study at: https://bit.ly/3nL1C5G