Before Evictions: Rental Housing Instability and the Role of Local Regulations

Session Submission Type: Student Research Panel

Abstract

As tenants spend increasingly larger shares of their income on rent, and eviction studies proliferate, local tenant protections and rental housing regulations have seen a renaissance around the country. This panel brings together papers on different rental housing regulations and tenant protections with new research on understanding and measuring housing instability to provide insights into how states and municipalities can effectively address U.S. tenants’ increasing housing precarity. The first paper, by Eze, establishes a foundation for current and innovative understandings of housing stability. The second paper, by Broughton, addresses tenant protections prior to lease initiation, during initial housing searches. The study examines source of income (SOI) anti-discrimination policies and the concentration of poverty, finding that SOI laws are associated with small decreases in poverty concentration, and when they contain administrative enforcement mechanisms, they are associated with higher decreases than court enforcement. The third paper, by Campbell, focuses on a policy that becomes most impactful for tenants after they have obtained housing: rent control. In an examination of the Los Angeles 2020-2024 rent freeze, Campbell finds some benefits to tenants covered under the rent freeze, attributing the modesty of the benefits to a possible need for stronger oversight and enforcement, echoing findings from Broughton’s work. Zooming in on the oversight and enforcement of rent regulations, the fourth paper by Fox-Dichter explores how tenants in Kingston, NY navigate their lease renewals under the city’s recently passed good cause eviction policy. Good cause eviction policies rely on tenant awareness, and this study preliminarily indicates that the involvement of community-based organizations and tenant organizers greatly contribute to tenants’ ability to self-enforce compliance of their lease renewals with the new law. Together, these papers shed new light on the relationship between tenant protective policies and rental housing stability, providing a granular breakdown of how tenant protections depend on mechanisms of enforcement.

Policy Area

• Housing, Community Development, and Urban Policy

Chair

• Peter Hepburn, Rutgers University - Newark

Discussants

• Megan E. Hatch, Cleveland State University

• Warren Robert Lowell, Vanderbilt University

Organizer

• Sophia Fox-Dichter, Rutgers University - New Brunswick

Individual Presentations

• Developing a Standardized Measure of Housing Instability through Community Engaged Research: A QuanCrit Paradigm - Presenting Author: Vandeka Janese Eze, University of Delaware

• Are Rents Really Under Control? Evidence from the Los Angeles Rent Freeze - Presenting Author: Chris Alvarez Campbell, American University

• A Good Cause for Renewal? How Tenants Navigate Lease Renewals Under Good Cause Eviction Laws - Presenting Author: Sophia Fox-Dichter, Rutgers University - New Brunswick