Eviction and Poverty in American Cities
Researchers
Robert Collinson | University of Notre Dame
John Eric Humphries | Yale University
Nicholas Mader | University of Chicago
Davin Reed | Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
Daniel Tannenbaum | University of Nebraska
* Winnie van Dijk | Yale University
. . .
*Winnie van Dijk is a Learning Collider affiliate.
Important: This study was not conducted by Learning Collider. The methodology and findings inform our lab’s ongoing research.
Abstract
More than two million U.S. households have an eviction case filed against them each year. Policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels are increasingly pursuing policies to reduce the number of evictions, citing harm to tenants and high public expenditures related to homelessness. We study the consequences of eviction for tenants using newly linked administrative data from two large cities. We document that prior to housing court, tenants experience declines in earnings and employment and increases in financial distress and hospital visits. These pre-trends are more pronounced for tenants who are evicted, which poses a challenge for disentangling correlation and causation. To address this problem, we use an instrumental variables approach based on cases randomly assigned to judges of varying leniency. We find that an eviction order increases homelessness, and reduces earnings, durable consumption, and access to credit. Effects on housing and labor market outcomes are driven by impacts for female and Black tenants.