Upstream Legal Literacy as an Eviction Prevention Mechanism: an RCT

• In Event: Before, During, and After: Lessons from State and Local Eviction Prevention Policies

Abstract

This paper discusses the Harvard Access to Justice Lab’s (“A2J Lab”) and the University of Houston Law Center’s (“UHLC”) findings with respect to the pilot evaluation of upstream provision of legal information through text message as an attempt to prevent eviction court cases.  Text messages were sent by Connective, a Houston, TX based non-profit created in response to Hurricane Harvey.  The Connective Texts program allowed residents to sign up for text messages providing information about community-based resources.  At the inception, resources were related to disaster recovery.  Connective Texts remained operable beyond hurricane recovery and became a resource to share information regarding community-based resources addressing a myriad of needs.  

The A2J Lab and UHLC worked with Connective to develop and launch a pilot to assess the operational feasibility of an evaluation investigating whether upstream provision of legal information can result in avoidance of eviction court filings.  The pilot mimicked a randomized control trial (“RCT”) and allowed researchers to understand enrollment volume, survey attrition, and data available for analysis.  In the pilot RCT, study participants were randomly assigned to either receive an oversampling of texts from Connective related to community-based housing resources (“Housing Information Condition”) or to receive the typical texts from Connective with information about a variety of topics (“Information Variety Condition”).  The A2J Lab and UHLC followed participants for a period of 9 months through surveys and administrative data collection.

The pilot showed the A2J Lab and UHLC can enroll sufficient volume to support a full evaluation and that administrative data sources are sufficient to analyze eviction court filings and interactions with housing resources.  The pilot also showed that survey attrition is higher than optimal when the research team can deploy only low intensity follow up methods.  The A2J Lab believes that it can reduce attrition with higher intensity follow-up.  Most importantly, the pilot showed that the Connective System allows identification of an intervention with respect to a service population with the A2J Lab believes to be an elevated risk of having an eviction filing within nine months. 

The pilot launched with its first enrolled participant on November 20, 2023.  The last participant enrolled on August 7, 2024.  The research team hoped to enroll 100 participants and met this goal by enrolling 101.  The research team surveyed participants at baseline, six weeks, and twelve weeks.  The research team collected administrative data from local and state-wide Homeless Management Information Systems (HMIS) and January Advisors, a data analysis firm holding, among other things, address history and court record data.  The pilot was a success.  This paper details the study timeline, findings, and recommendations for a future full study.

Author

• Renee L Danser, Harvard University
  Presenting Author