Though eviction filings are far more prevalent than eviction itself, they are quite damaging to renters even when they don’t lead to eviction. Eviction filings create financial uncertainty, impact the health and well-being of low-income renters, and cause hardship for tenants who have to miss work or neglect family obligations to show up in court. Most important, filings act as a “scarlet letter” on tenants’ records, making it hard for them to find housing in the future.
In a moment when unprecedented numbers of households are facing housing instability, we need to pay attention to the impact of eviction filings, not just executed evictions.
In a new report, we look at records from the D.C. court system between 2014 and 2018, showing that each year landlords file more than 30,000 residential eviction notices in the Landlord & Tenant Branch of the D.C. Superior Court. About 11 percent of renters in the District — 1 in every 9 — receives at least one eviction filing.
The prevalence of filing is even more concentrated in poor areas of the city with many residents of color — for example in Ward 8, where 1 out of every 4 renter households received an eviction notice in 2018. In fact, 60 percent of renters facing an eviction filing in D.C. live in neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River, even though only about 25 percent of renter households live in these neighborhoods.
Many households, especially those in Ward 8, receive multiple eviction filings without being removed from the home. Among renters receiving an eviction filing in 2018, we found that nearly 60 percent had received at least one additional filing at the same address during the five preceding years, a process called serial eviction filing. Why are landlords filing, if not to evict?
When a landlord files on his tenant several times in the same year, the landlord isn’t trying to kick the tenant out but to collect rent owed. Landlords are using the court system as a collection agency. This is an enormous burden on the system, needlessly dragging tenants to court and reducing the capacity of the court to arbitrate landlord-tenant disputes.
We must look at eviction filings — rather than just the final moment when tenants are removed from their homes — to understand the enormous burdens imposed by the eviction process. Nearly 95 percent of all eviction filings in D.C. don’t result in an executed eviction, and renters in nearly 70 percent of cases get their cases dismissed in court. Only about 6 of every 100 cases result in a formal eviction.
Even though most filings don’t result in removal, we should not ignore them. An eviction record is often a dealbreaker for landlords. Property owners make little distinction between a household that experienced an eviction filing and one that has been formally evicted.
The rules of the court system make it easy and cheap for landlords to file for eviction regularly against their tenants. Landlords in most major cities file for eviction at lower rates than landlords in D.C. In 2018, D.C. landlords filed 19 eviction notices for every 100 renter households. According to the Eviction Lab at Princeton University, landlords in Philadelphia filed fewer than 8 evictions for every 100 renters. In Chicago, they filed about 3 for every 100 renter households. In these cities, the cost of filing for an eviction is substantially higher. In Philadelphia, it costs between $60 and $110. In Chicago, it costs at least $280. But in D.C., a landlord has to pay only $15 to file for eviction with the court. The barrier is simply too low for landlords to use the court system in this way.
D.C. needs a set of policy approaches that work with landlords to stop eviction filings before they happen. Programs to keep landlords from filing against tenants in the first place would limit the harm done to tenants and prevent the stigma associated with a filing. Working with the court system to raise the cost of filing for eviction would discourage landlords from filing frivolous claims and using the courts as a collection agency. And additional attention to addressing the root causes of eviction by strengthening emergency rental assistance programs and housing subsidies for eligible families would bring attention to the systematic problems of housing affordability.
Stopping eviction filings before they happen is especially important in the midst of a global pandemic, when more households in the United States are facing housing insecurity than ever before.
Read more:
November 06, 2020 at 09:00PM
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/local-opinions/dc-makes-eviction-filings-too-easy/2020/11/05/ec441a88-1304-11eb-ad6f-36c93e6e94fb_story.html
D.C. makes eviction filings too easy - The Washington Post
https://news.google.com/search?q=easy&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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