The Politics and Practice of “Doing Nothing”: Accounting for Default in Los Angeles Eviction Cases

• In Event: 283 - Regular Session. Ethnography/Ethnographic Studies 2

Abstract

Research has suggested that full-scale representation significantly affects tenants’ eviction case outcomes, but assumes that tenants go to court in the first place (Seron et al. 2001). With over 65,000 unlawful detainers filed yearly in Los Angeles County and default judgment-rates approaching 50%, the more pressing question is not why tenants lose, but why so few show up in the first place. Attorneys and advocates tend to characterize the act of defaulting as tenants “doing nothing,” but this paper reveals that “doing nothing” is itself a practical accomplishment that exposes a disjuncture between practical experience and institutional expectation. Based on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in tenants’ rights clinics, I show how tenants’ different strategies for coping with housing troubles result in similar case outcomes. Far from a static event, tenants default through a series of practical steps, demonstrating different levels of compliance and non-compliance with legal documents, a process that reveals eviction as a phenomenon consisting of both institutionally and experientially legitimate forms. As tenants’ housing troubles transform into eviction cases, however, the court sanctions a singular legal definition and responses. Analyzing how tenants achieve default through myriad strategies, many of which are compliance-oriented, provides a means of not only accounting for divergent case outcomes, but also of elaborating mechanisms that render ostensibly accessible legal processes as tenants’ most formidable obstacle to success.

Author

• Kyle Nelson, University of California-Los Angeles