Oregon's Safe Harbor for Tenants: Rocky Shoals in Eviction Diversion
Portland State University, December 21, 2021
This report tracks Oregon eviction cases from July through September, 2021, to assess the implementation of the state's safe harbor policy, which intended to delay eviction proceedings for tenants who applied for emergency rent assistance. Analyzing data for the 1,138 nonpayment evictions at each documented stage of the eviction process including: court filing data; document review; and courtroom observation of cases (in Multnomah County only), the authors find that only 27% of tenants with nonpayment eviction cases got the ‘safe harbor’ setover and 25% of cases ended in a default judgement against a tenant for failure to appear at one of their court dates. 32.7% of nonpayment cases were dismissed, though it's unclear whether the tenant remained housed even if
the case was dismissed.
Addressing Homelessness Through Hotel Conversions
Terner Center for Housing Innovation, December 15, 2021
This report presents the results of an in-depth analysis of 13 hotel/motel acquisition projects from across the country, with a focus on conversions aimed at providing housing for people experiencing homelessness. The authors find that hotel/motel conversions can provide critical housing for people experiencing homelessness, but a missing piece of the puzzle is often sufficient funds to support long-term operations and services; expanded access to rental assistance and long-term services are critical to promoting successful resident outcomes. Further, local opposition to affordable housing can derail viable projects; local and state land use laws that streamline the development process can be effective tools in efforts to end homelessness.
The Impact of COVID-19 on Small Rental Property Management: Insights from a Chicago Case Study American Bar Foundation, December 7, 2021
In this report, authors Anna Reosti and Allison Suppan Helmuth draw on in-depth interviews with 69 small-scale landlords in the Chicago area to document their responses to challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Independently owned, small rental properties (SRPs) make up an outsized share of the nation’s supply of unsubsidized affordable housing in the private market, which is often referred to as “naturally occurring affordable housing.” The authors find that the majority of landlords in this study used flexible and accommodating approaches to property management during the pandemic. However, a sizeable minority (approximately one-fifth) of landlords whom they interviewed described taking up or planning to adopt more rigid and risk-averse management
practices in response to the financial challenges of the pandemic, such as raising rents, fees, and implementing more exhaustive and restrictive tenant screening criteria.
It has been a busy inaugural year for the Housing Crisis Research Collaborative. Since we officially launched in March 2021, Collaborative partners have published 14 research briefs and 6 blogs, and we hosted our first public event.
This effort has been a true collaboration among many partners, including eight research institutions and seven of the nation’s leading organizations representing state and local policymakers and affordable housing providers. We remain focused on providing actionable research to support the stabilization of renters during the pandemic, particularly those most impacted by COVID-19, as well as to address structural inequalities in access to safe, healthy and affordable housing.
We’ve studied a range topics prioritized by our network partners and their members, including how renters and landlords responded to financial distress due to the pandemic, what factors aided or impaired the distribution of emergency rental assistance, elements of successful renter stabilization policies and programs, and the potential for repurposing hotels for permanently affordable housing. Each product we published offered actionable lessons policymakers at all levels of government. Our top five evidence-based insights from across our research:
The number of renters who were behind on rent increased in the first year of the pandemic, and renters of color and single parents, who were disproportionately rent-burdened pre-pandemic, were hardest hit.Studies indicated that between 10 and 20 percent of renters were behind on rent by the beginning of 2021, and that renters of color, low-income renters, and middle-aged renters were more likely to be behind on their rent.
Rental assistance provided an essential backstop to eviction, including both ongoing rental subsidy programs and new emergency rental assistance provided in response to the pandemic. One Collaborative study found that residents of affordable housing who had a housing subsidy accrued lower levels of rental arrears than their unsubsidized neighbors during the pandemic. Another study found that the availability of rental assistance is essential to making eviction diversion and prevention programs work.
Building local capacity in both the public and nonprofit sectors is necessary to deliver emergency rental assistance quickly and equitably. The most successful emergency rental assistance programs built upon existing capacity or partnered with community-based organizations to scale up quickly. One study found that jurisdictions leveraged these partnerships throughout the application process, including intake, outreach, payment processing, and tracking. Another study found that early in the pandemic, many nonprofit housing counseling organizations pivoted away from services focused mainly on homeownership to expand or adapt services for renters while shifting from in-person to virtual services.
Innovative and strategic partnerships with courts and legal services are key to preventing evictions. One Collaborative study described promising eviction prevention and diversion models that included partnerships between rental assistance administrators, local courts, housing counseling and legal assistance organizations. Another
Collaborative study suggested that a civil right to counsel can help address “power imbalances in the landlord-tenant relationship” and bolster court-based efforts to prevent evictions.
Small landlords are an important part of the housing ecosystem and responses to ongoing housing instability challenges must include them.Roughly a third of landlords reported declines in rent collection during the pandemic, and landlords with smaller portfolios
reported more substantial losses. One Collaborative study found that most small landlords continued to use flexible and accommodating approaches to property management during the pandemic; however, a sizeable minority of small landlords described adopted more rigid and risk-averse management practices in response to financial challenges. Landlord participation is key to eviction diversion too: in one study, program administrators of eviction diversion programs emphasized the need to recruit and collaborate with landlords, and noted that these programs helped shift an oppositional landlord-tenant relationship toward more mutually beneficial relationships.
