Chart of the Day: The Effectiveness of Universal Access to Council in Reducing Evictions
Today’s chart of the day comes from the paper “The Effects of Legal Representation on Tenant Outcomes” by Michael Cassidy and Janet Currie. The study looked at the roll-out of New York City's Universal Access to Counsel program (UA), which offers free legal representation to tenants with income at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty guideline. The graphs show the differences in outcomes for those who went to housing court before the program was rolled out in their zipcode (left-hand side of each graph) and those whose court dates were after (right-hand side of graphs). Tenants who went to court after rollout were more likely to have counsel, were less likely to face eviction (judgment with possession & warrant issued), and faced smaller monetary judgments (log judgment amount).
These effects were driven by poorer neighborhoods and neighborhoods with higher shares of non-citizen and non-white residents.
Using the UA policy variation, the paper is able to abstract from the selection that would be inherent in a study that used only observational data on those in housing court with and without lawyers. Overall, the data suggest that universal access to council decreases evictions while providing better outcomes for those facing eviction.
Although this paper only has access to housing court records, so cannot extend its look to further implications Collinson et al (2022) shows that evictions have long-run negative impacts, including increased homelessness, reduced earnings, reduced durable consumption, and reduced access to credit.
It is worth noting that these papers only examine the effects of formal evictions, where a court order is issued. However, there are also many cases of informal evictions, where tenants are forced to leave without a formal court order.
These informal evictions are more difficult to study, but they may have different consequences for tenants. On one hand the tenants who are most disadvantaged before eviction may be more likely to comply with the eviction without appearing in court. However, they also do not acquire an eviction on their record, which may have long-term consequences for their ability to find housing in the future.