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| Topics and Issues | Evictions (10) |
In Nov. 2021, HUD issued its Report to Congress on the Feasibility of Creating a National Evictions Database. The report notes the importance of a national eviction database and HUD’s role in
1) Supporting states in submitting records to HUD on court-ordered evictions in a way that guarantees the protection of privacy and legal rights of tenants and landlords, using standardized definitions to avoid misinterpretation of the data. To complement this action, Congress should consider additional funding for technical assistance and capacity building grants, along with language requiring (to the extent feasible) states to comply with this data collection effort.
2) Enhancing existing Census Bureau surveys, or developing a new survey, to track the prevalence and characteristics of evictions that occur outside of the formal court system.
3) Improving HUD’s data collection on evictions from HUD administrated subsidized affordable housing programs.
HUD Report
As noted in a HUD summary of the report,
the Joint Explanatory Statement and the House Committee Report supporting the 2021 Appropriations Act directed the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to study the feasibility of creating an evictions database, including collecting information on three types of evictions:
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- Formal court-ordered evictions,
- Extra-legal evictions, and
- Administrative evictions.
The report reflects research by staff from HUD’s Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R) into the three types of evictions, including what data sources are available for each eviction type and how researchers and other stakeholders have sought to collect and analyze data related to evictions. PD&R staff also consulted with approximately a dozen key stakeholders to learn about the challenges of and opportunities for collecting data on eviction. The result is a report that provides background on the need for an eviction database (Chapter 1), a detailed discussion of lessons learned to date from efforts to collect data on court-ordered, extra-legal, and administrative evictions, including evictions of HUD-assisted households (Chapter 2), and a set of potential approaches for how HUD could move forward to build a national dataset on evictions, assuming additional federal funding and action from Congress (Chapter 3).
The Origin of the Report
In a House Appropriations Committee Report for FY21 appropriations, the House Appropriations Committee directed HUD “to explore what it would take to collect, analyze, and make publicly available data on evictions from all of its Federally-assisted housing properties, including classes protected under the Fair Housing Act, and report to the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations on its findings not later than 120 days after enactment of this Act.” Report, 109. The Committee also “recommends up to $22,000,000 for new and continuing studies and demonstration evaluations, including the…Feasibility study to explore how to collect different local policies related to evictions and a statistical effort relating to the creation of an evictions database, including how information is collected, consistent with civil rights protections, to understand eviction trends by classes protected under the Fair Housing Act…” Report, 136.
Additional Legislation
The House Appropriations Committee Report language comes out of S. 3030, the Eviction Crisis Act, a bipartisan bill by Sens. Michael Bennett (D-CO), Rob Portman (R-OH), Todd Young (R-OH), and Banking Chair, Sherrod Brown (D-OH). You may recall that early last year, Jay, Owen, and I met with Sam Mulopulos, LA to Sen. Portman; and Charlie Anderson, senior advisor to Sen. Bennet. Among other things, Sens. Bennett and Portman were very interested in a national eviction database. A finding in this bill is that “collecting more comprehensive and consistent data through a national eviction database would foster a better understanding of the causes and contours of the eviction crisis as well as what efforts should be made to prevent evictions that are costly to tenants, landlords, and communities or to mitigate the consequences of evictions when they are 10 unavoidable…” Sec. 2(2). The extensive database provisions in S. 3030 are in Sec. 5 of the bill and run from pages 11 to 23.