Focusing on Eviction Data Misses the Point
No one should be evicted for any reason, tenant’s rights activists say.
But, what if a tenant harasses another tenant? What if your neighbor plays loud music at all hours of the night? Or knocks on your door at 3am, drunk, because they forgot their keys. Should they be allowed to stay?
What if violent drug addicts climb onto the balcony you share with your next door neighbor, who sells drugs, to buy drugs and shoot up on that shared balcony? Should they be allowed to stay? What if you have kids and are scared about their safety? Is this a reason for eviction?
Before you say, “that doesn’t happen,” that actually happened to a friend of mine, who had a 7 year old at the time, in San Francisco.
What if someone doesn’t pay? Should they be evicted? Many tenant’s rights activists would say no. But then, someone has to pay. Should it be the landlord (70% of landlords are small, like they own 1 or 2 properties small, so they can’t afford it)? The government? If the government can’t afford it, who pays?
A recent Oaklandside article cited that “Evictions cases are rising fast after end of Alameda County moratorium.” Um, duh. Almost no evictions were allowed in the last 3 years. Literally any issues that arose related to tenants’ not paying, violating leases, harassing others, damaging property, etc., in 3 years are finally able to be addressed. That includes tenants that were not paying, but could, like the 50% of the people in Alameda County who didn’t pay their rent during the eviction moratorium and did not qualify for assistance.
Here’s the chart from the article:
As you can see, there are almost no evictions in 2020, 2021, 2022, and up to May 2023. That’s because evictions weren’t allowed in those 3 years (except in extremely rare situations). Let me repeat: EVICTIONS WEREN’T ALLOWED FOR THESE 3 YEARS. The article only compares the current eviction rate to those years, not the years before. That’s silly, as you cannot compare to an anomaly, which is what the last 3 years were (a very long anomaly, but still not typical outside a pandemic).
If you look at the chart, you see that the number of eviction filings is still well below that of pre-2020. Considering that tenants have had 3 full years to make mistakes that could lead to eviction, you’d actually expect this number to be much higher than pre-2020. This means that landlords are actually not evicting people that they could.
This also brings up another issue. What is considered an “eviction” in this data? Sometimes it’s 3 day notice filings, which usually do not lead to people actually being forced out. Typically, they pay and they stay. In this case, the data uses unlawful detainer filings. That means someone was evicted and refused to leave. Maybe it’s valid, maybe it’s not, but not all of these end with a tenant leaving. Since tenants get free, unlimited legal help to prevent evictions, many of these do not actually result in tenants leaving.
Why do we care so much about eviction anyway? Does eviction actually cause homelessness?
Alameda County has also gathered data on homelessness.
According to this infographic from the 2022 Alameda County Homeless Count and Survey Comprehensive Report, 25% of homelessness is caused by evictions and foreclosures, meaning that making stricter housing laws can only help a maxiumum of 25% of the causes of homelessness. Yes, 25% is a lot, but that means there are 75% other reasons why people become homeless. That’s a large percentage and deserves equal attention.
You know what else is grouped with evictions and causes homelessness? Foreclosures. Foreclosures are when a home owner can’t pay their mortgage and the bank takes it away. Why aren’t we talking about foreclosures in addition to evictions? They also cause homelessness. If you can’t pay your mortgage, there are no protections for you, like there are for tenants. And you know who can’t pay their mortgages and will be foreclosed on? Small housing providers who rent rooms to someone to help pay that mortgage or a family who couldn’t afford to live in their community and bought a duplex to “house hack” a place to live, offset their mortgage cost, and provide affordable housing at the same time.
The Oakland and Alameda County eviction moratoriums and their strict tenant’s rights polices have already caused 15% of small housing providers to foreclose, causing more homelessness, according to the East Bay Rental Housing Association, who collects this data. Why are we not talking about this?
In places where housing is plentiful, like where I grew up in the Midwest, it’s easy enough to just move to another, cheaper apartment. But what about in Oakland, CA, where housing is scarce? Picking up and moving to a cheaper place is unlikely and probably downright impossible, with rents going up, and the unhoused population growing exponentially on a daily basis? Does the government have the obligation to house others? Do landlords, who are private citizens, have the obligation to house others, regardless of impact? What if someone burns down the house? Should the tenant be allowed to be evicted? That seems like a silly question, but in Oakland, CA, a landlord is required to move a tenant whose house burned down to another location, pay to house them while the home is being rebuilt, then move them back at their own expense.
One thing is clear, these severe policies, put out there by tenants rights extremists (NOT reasonable people actually trying to solve homelessness, instead people gathering around an ideology that is based on a lot of half-truths and lies) are causing rents to rise and housing to be removed from the market. If you owned a home, would you consider renting out a room, knowing you might never be able to get someone out and they could use unlimited free legal help to stay indefinitely, while you scramble to find a lawyer you can afford? I think not.
Data on evictions is not enough. Ending evictions is not enough. Wholistic, thoughtful policy is needed so that people who own homes are actually incentivized to provide housing.
