Thoughts on Upcoming Evictions

Conor Dougherty and Gillian Freedman’s article in today’s NY Times is the best recent media piece (and there has been much coverage) on the prospect of an imminent and drastic increase in evictions following the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting unemployment. They start off by noting that this fear of a “tsunami” (or take your pick of alternative natural disaster metaphors) is widespread among analysts and researchers, but according to landlords this deluge has yet to hit.

I stumbled into this paradox after a webinar three weeks ago put on by University of Delaware’s Biden School of Public Policy & Administration in which I presented on the upcoming need for housing assistance in Delaware. Those interested can check out the presentation here, along with some excellent comments from three panelists. I went out of my way to argue that a eviction/homelessness tsunami was unlikely in Delaware, particularly given the logistics of managing eviction filings, given the state’s Justice of the Peace court system acknowledgment that, while DE’s eviction moratorium ended on July 1, it was unlikely that new eviction hearings would resume before October.

While this slow walk informally extends the eviction moratorium, I had figured that landlords would rush to submit eviction filings so that their cases would be at the head of the queue when evictions hearings resumed. Given the average number of new evictions filings in a pre-COVID month was 1500, I projected, based upon normal course of business and a three month backlog, that the number of July filings would likely be around 6,000, and even potentially as high as 10,000. This would be overwhelming for the JP courts.

Within the next few days, both Sophia Schmidt of Delaware Public Media and Jeanne Kuang at the Delaware News-Journal cited my estimate and queried court about the actual number of eviction filings for July. According to Schmidt: “Delaware’s JP courts received fewer than 500 landlord-tenant filings—less than a third of what’s usually seen in a given month, according to court officials.” She was gentle about it, but made it clear that I had badly overestimated. I’m happy to be wrong on this, but was also astounded on how the volume of business was about one-third of what one would expect without the pandemic-related economic shocks.

There are several possible explanations for the low Delaware eviction filings, including that landlords may not be immediately aware of the moratorium being lifted, or that they are reluctant to file due to empathy for their tenants. The webinar was held on July 30, just before the federal unemployment benefits supplement expired, and thus the hardship may not manifest itself until next month. Or maybe a tsunami, even of eviction filings (ie not actual evictions) as I had projected, will not materialize.

Dougherty and Friedman’s NYT article suggest the latter. They talked with tenants and landlords, citing many instances of both landlords working with tenants and tenants both resorting to any means necessary to pay rent or leaving before their rent problems lead to formal eviction proceedings. Eviction is a harsh, last-ditch process, and the lack of the expected magnitude of increase more likely masks a less quantifiable, quieter housing exodus that is also likely to be devastating to many households. The article gives poignant illustrations of this. This would fit Delaware’s experience so far, and would challenge housing researchers to look deeper than eviction and homelessness for a more nuanced portrait of the damage that low-income households, especially with laid off, service industry workers, are likely to experience.