How Do Housing First Caseworkers Mediate Landlord-Tenant Conflicts?

ABSTRACT

Housing First (HF) is a service model that addresses chronic homelessness with permanent supportive housing. Previous studies have analysed market constraints on housing searches, strategies caseworkers use to navigate these barriers, and clinical interventions that help clients transition to unsupported housing. Little research has examined the nuanced ways caseworkers mediate landlord-tenant conflicts once a lease has been formed. I advance those studies by answering the question: How do HF caseworkers mediate landlord-tenant conflicts? Using interview and focus group data collected in a large U.S. County, I provide evidence that HF caseworkers mediate landlord-tenant conflicts by managing “enforcement costs” throughout the lease. Enforcement costs are (non-)financial expenditures beyond the price of a commodity to ensure co-signers honour their contractual obligations. HF caseworkers manage enforcement costs by absorbing them for landlords and/or tenants throughout the lease. When caseworkers cannot or will not absorb enforcement costs, they are keen to delegate this responsibility to other parties. Absorption and delegation can help rebalance power inequities and/or undermine the reputation of HF programmes.

KEYWORDS:

• Housing first
• landlords
• tenants
• housing services
• transaction costs

Introduction

This paper analyses the way Housing First (HF) caseworkers manage landlord-tenant conflicts. HF is a service model that helps chronically homeless individuals recover from things like mental illness or substance abuse by giving them permanent supportive housing (PSH) without preconditions like sobriety (Tsemberis 2010). A person is “chronically” homeless in the USA if they live with a disability in a place not meant for human habitation, a safe haven, or in an emergency shelter continuously for at least twelve months or on at least four separate occasions in the last three years, as long as the combined occasions equal at least twelve months (Federal 2015).¹ PSH is “an intervention that combines affordable housing assistance with voluntary services to address the needs of chronically homeless people” (National Alliance to End Homelessness 2021). The U.S. Government shifted support to HF programmes from Treatment First (TF) ones in the early-2000s (Gent 2018). TF assumes homeless individuals have personal issues that need to be fixed before they are “housing ready.” It requires service recipients meet preconditions like sobriety before getting independently housed (Padgett, Henwood, and Tsemberis 2016). Whereas TF relies on provider-directed case management that advances the will of caseworkers, HF uses client-directed case management to enhance the self-sufficiency of clients by helping them achieve personal goals (Tsemberis 2010). HF caseworkers afford clients agency in two general ways. Clients are usually given a rental voucher to access preferred housing and can choose what services they want to use, if any. This separates housing from supportive services so clients can recover at their own pace.

HF caseworkers in the USA mostly use private lets to rehouse clients. This is because the U.S. Government primarily supports poor renters with rental subsidies (Hays 1985) and public housing constitutes just .71% of the USA’s total housing stock (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development 2020). Reliance on private lets means HF caseworkers must render clients profitable to landlords (Grainger 2022; Hennigan 2017). Because private landlords are unobligated to lease-up homeless applicants (Teles and Yipeng 2022), usually unconstrained by rent controls (National Multifamily Housing Council 2022), and often allowed to discriminate against subsidized renters (Tighe et al. 2017), they can impede efforts by HF caseworkers to rehouse clients. Many HF clients have a severe mental illness and/or addiction that generates behaviour landlords associate with “bad” tenancy (Stergiopoulos et al. 2016). Previous studies showed private landlords define a good tenant as somebody who pays their rent on time, maintains their property, and respects their neighbours (Greif 2018). The psychiatric condition, household income, housing history, and/or lifestyle of some HF recipients can make some landlords think they are bad tenants who violate their lease obligations. HF caseworkers must convince landlords to accept and keep their clients as tenants without harming their relationship with either stakeholder.

Few studies have analysed the way HF caseworkers solve this problem. Most qualitative research on HF implementation has focussed on clinical services that help clients become more self-sufficient whilst the quantitative studies have analysed the effect of HF on various outcomes (Carvalho and Furtado 2022). Research on housing counselling services has generally depicted HF caseworkers as landlord surrogates who generate profit by making clients lease compliant (Grainger 2022; Hennigan 2017) or supportive paternalists who help clients become independent (Parsell and Marston 2016). Such accounts ignore the ways HF caseworkers challenge landlords and the nuanced strategies they use to manage their clients’ tenancy. This paper extends those studies with qualitative research conducted in a large U.S. County that answers the question: How do HF caseworkers manage landlord-tenant conflicts? My analysis advances three literatures. It first extends research on HF casework by conceptualizing and providing a more nuanced account of housing counselling services (Hennigan 2017; Parsell and Marston 2016). It also advances literature on housing counselling services by detailing ways HF caseworkers confront landlord negligence and prevent eviction (Cunningham et al. 2010). Finally, it extends scholarship on landlord-tenant relations by showing how HF caseworkers rebalance these power relations for their clients during the lease (Desmond 2012; Garboden and Rosen 2019).

I continue by using the “transaction cost economics” framework (TCE) to conceptualize housing counselling services. That part of the paper differentiates private leases from other market exchanges to specify unique problems HF caseworkers addressed whilst delivering services. I then describe the data and methods used in this study. The findings section first examines the market constraints HF caseworkers navigated with their clients. It then analyses strategies they used to facilitate market exchanges by absorbing or delegating enforcement costs. The paper wraps-up with a brief discussion of its main findings, limitations, and directions for future research.

Conceptualising Housing Counselling Services

This section first reviews previous research that suggests housing counselling services can balance power disparities in private rental markets. It then extends past research by using TCE to conceptualize housing counselling services that HF caseworkers deliver, differentiate private rental market exchanges from other ones, and identify problems that can emerge throughout a private lease. I selected TCE because it clarifies issues HF caseworkers confront during rental market exchanges and informs my conceptualization of strategies that they use to solve those problems. Rather than use TCE to generate testable hypotheses, I use it as “sensitizing” framework to define a problem, develop research questions, and analyse interactional processes.

Urban sociologists have analysed the power dynamics in landlord-tenant relations. Private landlords control an essential resource that renters depend on (Desmond 2012). Access to private lets is mediated by a screening process that measures an applicant’s financial risk (Greif 2018).² Applicants who satisfy a landlord’s screening criteria may get leased-up and vice versa. Household income is a screening criteria that landlords commonly use to evaluate applicants (National Association of Independent Landlords 2008). Rental assistance like Housing Choice Vouchers (HCV) is often classified as household income. Landlords have been noted to discriminate against (Cunningham et al. 2018), upcharge (Matthew and Perkins 2016), and spatially concentrate HCV recipients (Rosen 2014). Because the residents of most U.S. cities lack source of income (SOI) protections (Tighe et al. 2017), many HCV recipients cannot legally challenge landlord discrimination. SOI protection however does not guarantee HCV recipients are immune to landlord discrimination. Landlords creatively find legal ways to discriminate against HCV recipients (Tighe et al. 2017).

Tenants may get evicted if they violate their lease. Recent qualitative studies have detailed the way private landlords use eviction to remove unwanted tenants. Desmond (2012) analysed methods private landlords use to evict poor tenants. He showed eviction deepens poverty by exhausting household resources, increasing debt, and creating employment barriers. Private landlords use the threat of eviction to intimidate indebted tenants into paying off arrears (Garboden and Rosen 2019). Because only 25% of eligible households can access HCV (Acosta and Gartland 2021), poor tenants are often rent burdened and prone to arrears.³ This creates a “contingent tenure” that undermines health and well-being (Garboden and Rosen 2019). Not all landlords immediately evict indebted tenants. Whilst legal protections may prevent landlords from evicting tenants who know how to use those tools (see U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development n.d..), Eva and Garboden (2022) showed some landlords try to “rehabilitate” tenants by training them to honour their lease. Landlords thus exercise discretion whilst controlling access to an essential resource.

Housing counselling services can change this power dynamic. Some public housing authorities (PHA) in the USA have used these services to help HCV recipients access low-poverty neighbourhoods (Walter and Wang 2016). These programmes have included housing search assistance, landlord outreach, moving assistance, post-move counselling, and subsequent move assistance (Cunningham et al. 2010). PHAs have also allocated resources to recruit and maintain landlord partners in low-poverty neighbourhoods. Galvez, Simington, and Trekson (2017) showed some PHAs have given landlords financial incentives (i.e. property damage reimbursement and vacancy insurance, and modified home inspections) to lease-up HCV recipients. This has helped HCV recipients avoid landlord discrimination (Shroder 2002), access low-poverty neighbourhoods (Bergman et al. 2023), and/or maintain residency in low-poverty areas (Comey, de Sousa Briggs, and Weismann 2008); however, these benefits might be conditional on things like the employment status, household size, and housing history of HCV recipients (Schwartz, Mihaly, and Gala 2017).

Housing counselling services are integral to HF casework. Past research has shown HF caseworkers often confront affordable housing shortages (Carvalho and Furtado 2022). This forces them to devote a lot of time engaging landlords and helping clients negotiate leases (Watson, Wagner, and Rivers 2013). Affordable housing shortages have made caseworkers compromise HF principles like consumer choice, rapid housing (Anderson-Baron and Collins 2019), and PSH (Clarke, Parsell, and Vorsina 2020). Unlike housing counselling provided by HCV programmes (Cunningham et al. 2010), HF delivers intensive services throughout a client’s tenancy to prevent re-entry into homelessness. Grainger (2021) showed caseworkers use client-directed interventions to produce competencies so clients can independently perform their tenancy. Parsell and Marston (2016) found caseworkers do this so clients can transition into unsupported housing. The prevalence of lease violations by clients led Watson et al. (2013) to deem eviction prevention services essential to HF implementation. That evidence qualifies claims that HF facilitates recovery by allowing caseworkers to focus on clinical rather than housing-related issues (Henwood, Stanhope, and Padgett 2011). Housing counselling services are instead central to HF casework for many clients, especially those with complex needs.

Although previous research on HF implementation has noted the salience of housing counselling services, it offers an incomplete and under-theorized account of those interventions. Studies have stated that caseworkers provide housing counselling without detailing the various strategies they use (Henwood, Stanhope, and Padgett 2011; Stergiopoulos et al. 2016; Watson, Wagner, and Rivers 2013). Authors that have theorized housing counselling conceptualize the client-provider relation as either discipline (Grainger 2022) or justified paternalism (Parsell and Marston 2016). Discipline reproduces local rental markets by creating thoughts, feelings, and habits that clients need to voluntarily participate in exchanges as consumers. Justified paternalism helps clients recover from mental illness and grow their self-sufficiency through supportive services. The difference between these perspectives is sensitivity to and normative evaluation of the power dynamic in landlord-tenant relations. Disciplinary theorists problematize the way HF caseworkers “bend” clients to the will of landlords. Paternalism theorists view this aspect of HF casework as a legitimate use of power that benefits service recipients and landlords. Both assume landlord-provider ties are cooperative, ignore other aspects of a rental market exchange that caseworkers manage, and obscure the relationship between strategies that caseworkers use to manage landlord-tenant relations.

TCE is a theoretical framework that can help us unpack the nuances of housing counselling services delivered by HF caseworkers. A transaction is a market exchange between supplier and buyer that can vary in frequency, certainty, and investment (Williamson 1979). One-off transactions at our neighbourhood shops are low-risk because they are sporadic exchanges between independent parties who have relatively good market information. In contrast, repeated, uncertain, idiosyncratic transactions expose co-signers to transaction costs: Informal (non-) financial expenses, beyond the price of a commodity, that burden someone during a market exchange. (Coase 1960) distinguishes three transaction costs: search, bargaining, and enforcement. Search costs are investments made to find earnest contractual partners. Bargaining costs are investments made to negotiate the details of a contract. Enforcement costs are investments to ensure co-signers honour their contractual obligations. Rental market exchanges are prolonged transactions that expose landlords and tenants to “opportunism” (i.e. contractual violations). An apartement lease is a protracted contract that requires frequent, uncertain, and idiosyncratic transactions (Desmond 2012). The formation, maintenance, and termination of a lease exposes co-signers to transaction costs.⁴ HF caseworkers facilitate this process with housing counselling services that manage transaction costs for each co-signer.

The alignment of interests between co-signers can vary throughout the lease. This exposes co-signers to different kinds of opportunism. HF caseworkers manage the breadth and depth of transaction costs for each co-signer. Previous studies have shown caseworkers help clients minimize search costs by identifying plausible housing options (Anderson-Baron and Collins 2019) and bargaining costs by negotiating leases on their behalf (Grainger 2021). Other studies have shown caseworkers reduce enforcement costs for landlords by disciplining their clients to be good tenants (Hennigan 2017). Fidelity to HF principles can create problems for caseworkers whilst they provide housing counselling services (Grainger 2022). The separation of housing from services means clients can refuse treatment without losing their rental subsidy (Tsemberis 2010). This can generate lease violations that caseworkers must address whilst trying to honour their clients’ decision (Grainger 2022). To maintain rapport with both co-signers, HF caseworkers have to manage enforcement costs to stop the exchange from getting terminated. Below, I present a case study of HF implementation in a large U.S. County to examine the way HF caseworkers solve this problem. My analysis will use TCE to answer the question: How do HF caseworkers mediate landlord-tenant conflicts?

Data & Methods

To answer this question, I did a qualitative case study in a large post-industrial County that is segregated by class, race, and ethnicity. I did not name the County because the small number of organizations providing HF services meant readers could easily identify participants if the location were disclosed. I have consequently pseudonymised the study’s location and names of participants. In “Springfield County,” less than 10% of the county’s rental stock lent units below $500 (U.S. Census Bureau 2018). Roughly 65% of households earning at or below 30% of HUD Area Median Income devoted 50% or more of their wages to rent (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development 2019a). Springfield County’s public housing stock decreased from 5,000 units in the year 2000 to under 2,750 units whilst HCV wait time exceeded 20 months in 2019 (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development 2019a). One-in-1,000 residents experienced homelessness in 2018. Over 50% of Springfield County’s homeless population identified as Black and 10% of the homeless population was chronic (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development 2019b).

Springfield County’s homeless system had the following characteristics. All agencies in this system were funded by federal and local tax levies. This imposed performance requirements on HF providers that caseworkers had to meet whilst delivering services. During this study, the Springfield County Housing Authority promoted HF as the way to address chronic homelessness and local service providers embraced HF principles.⁵ HF programmes were administered by public and non-profit organizations. The County’s PHA administered two HF programmes that relied on vouchers. One of these programmes was financed by HUD whilst the other was funded by local government. Although both programmes contracted mental health providers to deliver services, one of them also used in-house staff. Two non-profit organizations administered master lease programmes. Unlike vouchers, which made HF clients the lessee of their unit and allowed them to lease-up with any landlord who accepted their subsidy, master leases made the service provider lessee and limited the clients’ housing options to units leased by their HF programme. All four programmes directly paid landlords rent and assigned a case management team to each client. The role of caseworkers varied by organization. Those who worked with voucher recipients managed landlord-tenant relations unless a crisis unfolded that programme supervisors addressed. Caseworkers who worked with master lease recipients helped clients maintain their apartment, but used an in-house liaison who managed conflicts.

I got approval from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institutional Review Board to do 44 in-depth interviews and five focus groups with HF caseworkers during one-year of fieldwork that spanned 2017–2018. Participants were recruited from case conference meetings, where clients who had become eligible for housing assistance were referred to an HF programme, that I had observed for eight months and mental health providers who County officials contracted to deliver HF case management. I asked programme supervisors for permission to recruit their caseworkers. Fifty-seven participants were part of an assertive community treatment (ACT) team that delivered mental health services. Twenty participants were “bridge” case managers who helped HF recipients transition into permanent housing before referring them to a permanent caseworker that was employed by the County or a non-profit agency. I first did one-on-one and one-on-two interviews with caseworkers to familiarize myself with common practices. I used the knowledge that I gained through the interviews to conduct focus groups with five ACT teams who provided HF case management.

Table 1 describes the sample’s demographic characteristics. I used a semi-structured interview and focus group guide to collect data. Both guides used the same questions to explore topics like respondent caseload, client assessment, landlord engagement, housing searches, lease negotiations, tenancy maintenance, and conflict mediation. I recorded interviews at a location selected by respondents. Each interview and focus group lasted 30–90 minutes; however, most were about one-hour. Interview and focus group participants were demographically similar to one another. I sent recordings to a private transcriptionist. Transcripts were anonymized and analysed with MAXQDA software. I first open coded transcripts to identify topics that I could address with this data. After identifying the homeless governance literature and selecting TCE, I used focused coding to conceptualize the practices that constitute my data analysis.

Table 1. Demographic characteristics of study participants (n = 77; year 2018).

Demographic Characteristics	Frequency	Percent
Age Cohort
Young Adults (18–35)	34	44.2
Middle-Aged Adults (36–55)	34	44.2
Older Adults (56–99)	8	1.4
N/A	1	1.3
Gender
Female	63	81.8
Male	13	16.9
Non-binary	1	1.3
Race
Asian	1	1.3
Black	15	19.5
Brown	1	1.3
Hispanic	1	1.3
White	57	74.0
Other	1	1.3
N/A	1	1.3
Education Level
High School Degree	2	2.6
A.A or A.S. Degree	6	7.8
Bachelor’s Degree	27	35.1
Master’s Degree	42	54.5
Employment History (In Years)
≤5	18	23.4
6–10	23	29.9
11–15	20	26.0
16–20	7	9.1
21–25	7	9.1
26 ≤	2	1.3
Sectoral Affiliation
Non-profit	71	92.2
Public	6	7.7
Casework Function
Bridge case management	24	31.2
Long-term case management	53	68.8

Findings

Figure 1 summaries the paper’s main findings. The data analysis starts by describing rental market constraints that respondents encountered. The next part analyses the ways participants navigated market constraints by absorbing or delegating enforcement costs. To clarify, my use of the word “manage” is not synonymous with “reduce” because respondents sometimes shifted rather than mitigated enforcement costs. Moreover, my analysis focusses on the existing contract. Although the decisions of respondents may have impacted subsequent exchanges, I restrict my analysis to the contract they described in each excerpt. Lastly, this study analyses strategies caseworkers used to manage enforcement costs. It is concerned with the impact participants intended to have and is agnostic about the actual effect of their actions.

Figure 1. An overview of key findings that are presented in the data analysis.

Market Constraints

This subsection analyses barriers that respondents confronted in Springfield County’s rental market. It shows the affordable housing shortage, landlord discrimination, resource dependency, and concentrated poverty in Springfield County were barriers that caseworkers had to navigate whilst delivering services. The evidence presented here provides context for understanding the enforcement costs and managerial strategies that are examined later in the data analysis.

Participants rehoused clients in a stratified rental market that lacked public and social housing options.⁶ They interpreted private landlords as profit-driven actors who provided housing out of self-interest rather than charity, “I think their main [concern] is money. They want it in a timely fashion. They don’t want to be worried about whether something was wrong … ” [Stan]. Respondents knew landlords screened lease applicants to minimize enforcement costs that frustrated profit-making. HF clients submitted lease applications that violated the screening criteria of prospective landlords:

“Criminal history is one. Lack of rental history. Some [landlords] want three years rental history. Well, they’re homeless. Past eviction records is a barrier … Economics is a barrier … An individual may not have the best hygiene … Landlords may be like, ‘I don’t know if I really want to rent to this person’.” [Jane]

Respondents believed this portended enforcement costs to landlords:

“There are a lot of reasons why individuals end up homeless … Maybe they get a place on their own temporarily, but because of these ongoing issues they may not be a responsible tenant … I’ve got to imagine that it’s a pain going through getting a tenant and it’s a pain when you lose somebody”. [Will]

Despite the local government’s prohibition against SOI discrimination, participants said they routinely confronted it whilst leasing-up clients, “A lot of landlords will not rent to people who are receiving any kind of rental assistance” [Ginny]. Some attributed SOI discrimination to delayed rent payments:

“When I was doing case management a couple years ago, and I worked with [Housing First] … There was more landlords that were willing to work with [Housing First] … Now, [a] lot of landlords have kind of cut that tie because there might be late payments and stuff like that”. [Jade]

Whilst others attributed it to prejudice:

“The reason why you get [Housing First] is because you’re with special needs housing … You kind of have to divulge your mental health issues or your homelessness history … We’ve noticed that there have been whole big apartment renting agencies [that] just stopped taking [Housing First] or they don’t want to deal with our clients anymore”. [Alyssa]

The prevalence of SOI discrimination led some to conclude the private market could not help their clients:

“We don’t have a lot of housing geared specifically towards our population. You have to think about those habits that they’ve created while being homeless. It’s not going to break because they’re in a nice apartment. We need housing that’s going to understand that”. [Katia]

Respondents consequently built relationships with private landlords. This meant they often worked with a pool of landlords with whom their organization had established trust, “I have a group of landlords that I have worked with … We’ve built good rapport. They know what’s coming … With new landlords, it’s a lot of apathy” [Sasha]. Landlords varied in willingness to lease-up HF clients:

Sarah: “The private people, we can get them to work with us more than we can the agencies. The agencies they want somebody who has a clean eviction record … ”

Interviewer: “Why do you think the private landlords are more willing to work with you than the property management companies?”

Judy: “We just build that rapport and the relationship … ”

Pliable landlords often let units in high-poverty neighbourhoods, “I feel like the apartments that clients are limited to are located in areas that are high-risk for my clients” [Ginny]. If a client refused options from their caseworker’s referral network or familiar landlords refused a client, then participants searched online ads for a unit, “I have an old list from [the County] of different landlords. Sometimes it’s a matter of just calling people … Sometimes we go to Craigslist” [Jane]. This prolonged housing searches because respondents confronted multiple rejections. Housing searches were longer for service-resistant clients who frequently moved:

“That brings a lot of hardship on me … It’s like, ‘This is his fourth apartment in four years. What are we going to do?’ … And not only that, landlords are not going to rent to them because of their history”. [Taylor]

This stressed HF caseworkers, “I’m a busy guy. I don’t need to be moving somebody once a week. I just don’t have time” [Robert]. Because the agencies that employed HF caseworkers were financed by performance-based grants and relocating service-resistant clients was an arduous task that undermined programme implementation, participants had personal and professional reasons to manage enforcement costs. Failure to do so made it harder for HF caseworkers to secure an essential resource that they needed to perform their role.

Many respondents said landlords who accepted their clients were negligent. Landlords who let units in low-poverty neighbourhoods were unlikely to accept clients because their typical applicant was stably employed and followed their lease. Some participants said landlords who let in high-poverty neighbourhoods were keen to accept HF recipients because the programme guaranteed revenue and provided free property management services:

“When you’re [an] independent landlord, the main thing you struggle with every month is eviction for not getting rent … So, having rent come every time the same day every month was appealing … Also, with a private tenant not in a programme who’s causing issues, it’s themselves having to deal with it … With a programme … The programme would do it. That was a selling point for a few folks”. [Mike]

Respondents said “incompetent” landlords were more likely to accept clients than “competent” ones:

“Housing options you get when you have a low-income are not great. There’s always going to be something wrong. There is just always things that if you lived somewhere where you’re paying more in rent, and you have a competent property management or landlord, you don’t have to worry about … ” [Lauren]

Such landlords typically owned units in high-poverty neighbourhoods that disincentivised upkeep and let to poor tenants who lacked resources to demand repairs. Participants consequently dealt with landlord negligence:

“The biggest thing would be upkeep of buildings … A lot of [a property management company’s] buildings are 70-plus years old. With that, comes a lot of problems. Getting them to respond to repairs is probably one of the biggest problems”. [Robert]

Although units had to pass inspection, they were often in old buildings that required upkeep that some landlords eschewed or housed tenants whose lifestyle invited pest infestation. This meant some clients occupied units with bedbugs, mouldy walls, and/or broken appliances. Respondents thus routinely made maintenance requests that landlords ignored. This portended conflicts that caseworkers had to mediate.

In short, every participant said Springfield County lacked affordable housing for HF clients. The units that clients could access were often located in high-poverty neighbourhoods, part of the County’s older housing stock, and/or managed by negligent landlords. Respondents thus expected high enforcement costs because clients and landlords violated their lease. Respondents had to carefully balance enforcement costs to maintain rapport with both co-signers and ensure access to an essential resource. To this end, participants absorbed enforcement costs whenever possible and delegated managerial responsibilities when they could or would not independently address problems.

Absorption

The first way respondents mediated conflicts was by absorbing enforcement costs. Absorption is the direct management of enforcement costs by a caseworker. I start this section by analysing how respondents used information sharing, confrontation, resocialisation, education, and eviction deterrence to absorb enforcement costs for landlords. The second part of this section analyses the way participants absorbed enforcement costs for clients by contacting negligent landlords, withholding rent, foregoing lease renewals, mediating communication, and/or challenging racial discrimination with anti-racist interventions.

Participants established a relationship with landlords to secure a unit for their client and/or obtain information about their clients’ tenancy. The housing history, household income, criminal background, and/or psychiatric presentation of some clients concerned some landlords. Participants assuaged those fears by presenting themselves as free property managers who ensured clients complied with their lease:

“I briefly describe the programme, ‘People mostly have significant mental health issues … We support them … Make sure their rent is paid on time. If there’s any housing issues or behavioural issues, feel free contact us … ’” [Carson]

When somebody lease-up their client, some respondents nurtured that relationship by getting landlords to share information with them about clients, “I’ve also taken time to call the landlord every month or two, say, ‘How’s it going?’ … And get their feedback … And let them know to call me if there’s some problem” [Phil]. Participants from both the public and non-profit sector used this strategy. Periodic visits validated the property management role that respondents assigned to themselves. This helped participants obtain information about their client and stop problems from escalating to eviction. It also persuaded landlords that caseworkers protected their economic interests. This presented HF as an informal property management service that minimized enforcement costs for landlords.

Respondents used this information to address lease violations by their client. Every participant experienced landlord-tenant conflicts that emerged because of their clients’ property damage, extended guests, noise complaints, rent non-payment, and/or drug use. Respondents addressed these enforcement costs by confronting clients on the landlord’s behalf. They initially responded to landlord complaints by collecting information about the incident:

“We had one circumstance where the landlord said, ‘I’ve had enough.’ He had reports of traffic … We looked into it … We got both sides … There seemed to be some inconsistencies … We asked the landlord if he would entertain a conversation … That salvaged the relationship”. [Vince]

If participants verified a landlord’s complaint, they confronted the client for them:

“The landlord emailed … Apparently, [my client] was throwing things over the railing … I did address it … I just said, ‘I just wanted to touch base because your landlord had contacted [the County] and he’d appreciate it if you could maybe clean some of this up out here’.” [Sally]

Respondents used these confrontations to resocialize their clients. Shona, for example, explained rental market norms to a client when their landlord complained about extended guests:

“We’re concerned that someone was actually living there. ‘No, they just come every night … ‘ ‘The perception is that you’re having someone who’s there more often than they’re not.’ … They have a hard time understanding that, ‘It’s true, this apartment is yours, but someone else owns it … It’s up to them and their comfortability with what’s going on. So, they have a concern. You have to listen to it … They’re the ones with the power, because it’s their building.’”

This was intended to make clients comply with their lease. Although confrontation might defuse immediate conflicts, it could also prevent future ones by transforming clients into autonomous consumers. This immediately benefited landlords by mitigating enforcement costs, reduced the number of conflicts that participants had to manage, and expanded housing options for clients by improving their rental history. Confrontations that were meant to help landlords could thus benefit caseworkers and clients over time.

Despite their efforts, participants could not always change their clients’ behaviour. Recall HF allows clients to refuse treatment and uses harm reduction to keep clients housed. This complicated the relationship participants had with some landlords:

“If they’re in their unit drinking, we’re honouring their choice to do that. But, when it’s affecting other people in the building, then we have to be understanding with the landlord and mitigate that as soon as possible”. [Mike]

Accumulated enforcement costs motivated some landlords to threaten eviction and/or refuse to lease-up other HF recipients. Participants initially addressed this by educating landlords about their clients:

“It’s our job to advocate for our clients and pretty much educate the landlord, ‘This is the population that we work with … This is the type of client that you have in your home.’ Sometimes people are willing to listen and give them another chance … ” [Hannah]

If that failed, they requested a mutual lease termination to deter eviction. A mutual lease termination was an agreement between co-signers to dissolve their lease. This let landlords avoid a costly eviction:

“When you do a mutual lease termination, it’s requested from their landlord because of ongoing issues … The property manager or the owner just doesn’t want to deal with that type of tenant”. [Taylor]

Most landlords granted HF clients flexibility when a lease was mutually terminated, “Unless things have really gone bad, most landlords will be willing to work with you and let them stay until you find a new place … ” [Ross]. This was only necessary when the client was a voucher recipient since the service provider co-signed master leases. Regardless, clients who warranted eviction burdened landlords with costly legal proceeding(s), property damage, and/or marketing expenses to find a new tenant. Respondents wanted to preserve their relationship with disgruntled landlords so they would lease-up other clients. They consequently tried to lessen frustration with education and deterred eviction with a mutual lease termination if that did not work.

That said, participants also absorbed enforcement costs for clients. Landlords have legal obligations to tenants that are specified in the lease. A recurrent problem mentioned by interviewees was neglected maintenance repairs. Respondents said some landlords ignored their clients’ complaints. They initially addressed these situations with an assertive maintenance request:

“I’ve had clients tell me, ‘I tried to call my landlord. They won’t call me back … ’ Then, I’ll call. They pick up right away. They just won’t talk with my clients about it because they know something’s different compared to the other tenants … And it’s like, ‘Why are you not helping my client right now? This is your job’.” [Aiden]

Participants thought landlords discriminated against clients because they were vulnerable and used their role to challenge discrimination. Landlord negligence triggered some clients who required counselling during these conflicts:

“I check on people more often when that happens … They’re usually just annoyed with the landlord. So, it’s just processing that frustration, “‘I totally get it too. I’m annoyed too’.” [Lauren]

This portended conflict and/or eviction if grievances went unresolved. Some respondents let clients try to resolve these issues on their own to grow self-sufficiency. If clients could not or would not independently address the situation, then participants confronted the landlord with phone calls, text messages, and/or emails.

When this did not fix the problem, some respondents withheld rent.⁷ Participants were often their clients’ representative payee: someone appointed by the Social Security Administration to manage the income of Social Security Disability Insurance recipients who have either surrendered control of their finances or been deemed “incompetent” by a licenced clinical professional (e.g. physician, psychiatrist, mental health counsellor, social worker). Payee-ship allowed respondents to challenge negligent landlords:

“You hold back rent. There was one person who I just moved where the heat was turned off … [The landlord] called me like, ‘Why are you moving him?’ I’m like, ‘You had electricity off.’ ‘No, I didn’t … ’ I said, ‘Bullshit … You’re out your money’.” [Sheila]

Respondents also notified negligent landlords that their tenants’ lease would not get renewed if maintenance repairs were unfinished:

“I was working with a client … I advocated for them to put in new carpet to renew his [HF] lease … ” [Interviewer: “How did you get the landlord to pay attention and deal with the issues?”] “That he’s not going to get paid unless [the HF] lease is renewed”. [Jade]

Withholding rent and foregoing lease renewals challenged landlords by attacking their primary interest: profit. Becoming a representative payee gave caseworkers legal control over their clients’ income. This allowed them to pay monthly bills like rent for their clients and gave them leverage to withhold rent or deny a lease renewal until a negligent landlord resolved their clients’ maintenance issue. Doing so coerced negligent landlords to honour their lease obligations.

Participants also shielded clients from personal abuse. Several respondents said their clients let units from rude landlords. This made it hard for clients to address day-to-day issues. One landlord was so abusive that Sasha mediated all communication between him and her clients:

“He has verbally assaulted my clients … I strongly encourage them not to talk to that landlord … Any of their issues need to come through me … I’m there if he ever needs to be on the property.”

Given Springfield County racial history, respondents said their clients confronted racism while interacting with landlords:

“My clients who are African American … I’ll give my clients the phone … And just the attitude from the get-go is completely different … And then I have to get on the phone … And then the attitude just switches … We’re also racial advocates … That’s a big part of our job”. [Stacy]

And some participants addressed racism during landlord-tenant conflicts:

“One young lady … We got her a beautiful loft on the south side … She moved all the lobby furniture into her apartment … The property manager lady was livid … I got the agreement for all three of us to sit down and have that conversation … She was an older white lady … My client was a young African American lady … And she wanted to be motherly over my client and didn’t understand why that was extraordinarily triggering for this young lady … We were able to get her to understand … The furniture went back out in the lobby … We met her halfway”. [Nina]

Recall rental market exchanges are repeated, uncertain, idiosyncratic transactions. Poor communication creates enforcement costs for both co-signers. Communication problems can emerge from either the landlord or tenant. Respondents facilitated rental market exchanges by addressing miscommunication from either party. This minimized enforcement costs by ensuring both co-signers complied with their lease obligations.

Delegation

The second set of strategies that respondents discussed was delegating responsibility for managing enforcement costs. Sometimes this meant participants shifted the burden of enforcement from themselves to the landlord by refusing to discipline their client. At others, it meant respondents requested assistance from a third-party. I continue by first describing the way respondents delegated enforcement costs to landlords. I will then analyse the way participants delegated enforcement costs to local government and non-profit organizations.

To begin, caseworkers sometimes delegated enforcement costs to landlords. Recall HF clients neither have to be sober nor participate in mental health or substance abuse treatment. Mike previously showed how this can complicate the relationship between caseworkers and landlords. Some participants kept service-resistant clients housed by teaching them to conceal their drug use from landlords:

“We don’t want you using drugs but … We know you’re still going to use them … If you’re going to [then] take precautions. Stay off the landlord’s radar … Put a fan in your window when you’re smoking pot … ” [Robert]

If this failed, some respondents deceived landlords into believing they were managing enforcement costs:

“They found weed in [a client’s] apartment … I was upfront with [them] … We’ve got to play the game, now … I’ve told you many times that this could get you in trouble … I’m not going to personally like do anything to make you stop … But now we’re going to go in [and] play the game because your landlord needs to know that I’m going to back her up, but just kind of know that also I’m on your side. ” [Sasha]

When service-resistant clients accrued enforcement costs, some participants encouraged landlords to call the police:

“I have landlords who will call me and be like, ‘So-and-so is aggressive,’ and they won’t call the cops. Call the cops! What do you expect me to do? … We can’t control these people. They’re grown adults. They can make their own choices. There’s only so much I can do”. [Alice]

Whilst at other times, respondents encouraged landlords to evict negligent clients:

“To be honest, “You have to do what you have to do.” They have to protect their properties … We’re not these people’s saviours … We can tell them … “You need to do this or you’re going to get kicked out,” but at some point, natural consequences come to play … ’” [Brooke]

By delegating enforcement costs to landlords, participants took a big risk. On the one hand, it allowed them to maintain rapport with clients by circumventing conflicts and minimized personal stress when their clients’ behaviour portended eviction. On the other hand, it discouraged landlords from leasing-up HF clients. Respondents carefully weighed the short-term benefits of delegating enforcement costs against the potential long-term costs.

Participants also delegated enforcement costs to local government. PHA officials managed rent payments and lease recertification for both HF voucher programmes. The PHA took a couple months to set up rent payments. Landlords thus would not get the County’s 70% of monthly rent at the very beginning of the lease. Back rent would get paid in a lump sum on the third month. New landlords sometimes did not know this and threatened to evict HF clients. When landlords contacted respondents about this issue, they referred them to the PHA rather than contact the County on the landlord’s behalf:

“[One of my clients] was pretty new … [The landlord] put some signs on his door, ‘You owe this amount.’ And he comes to me with that … I called up there and let them know that if there’s issues with portions having not been paid that would be on the County … It’s not his problem or my problem”. [Tina]

At other times, HF clients did not pay their 30% of rent. Respondents initially encouraged clients pay rent. If this failed, they notified PHA officials who scheduled a staff meeting:

“If somebody stops paying their portion of the rent, we have a [Housing First] staffing … If people are working, then it’s really like working with the case manager to come up with a plan … There are some folks that struggle with their mental health … Then, I encourage the case manager to reach out to Social Security to see if there’s somebody that should be mandated to have a payee … ” [Naomi]

PHA officials also withheld rent when units did not meet quality standards. Participants used this leverage to delegate enforcement costs when landlords were grossly negligent:

“[One client] was clashing with the landlord because the landlord didn’t want to make the repairs. All winter long there was so much air coming like through windows … He had a lot of issues with mice … We reach out to the landlords to see if we can get those repairs done … He ended up dealing with the County”. [Pearl]

One PHA official said he stopped paying rent if landlords did not bring the unit up to quality standards:

“If there’s a bedbug issue, I have pulled the subsidy … But I give [landlords] time…If they’re actively working on the infestation … I’ll continue to subsidise … If there’s no work on it or it continues to happen or if it’s not resolved over a certain amount of time, I will cut it [rent payments] off … ” [Tristan]

In other cases, the PHA would not recertify a lease if the landlord did not address maintenance issues:

“At the re-cert, if our inspector goes out and there’s issues that are addressed in the unit, then they don’t get paid. If the landlord’s not going to fix the unit, then the tenant usually moves. They have to address the issue … ” [Naomi]

HF caseworkers also contacted the City’s neighbourhood services department to coerce negligent landlords. When I asked, “How do you deal with negligent landlords,” one participant said:

“The same way we would deal with it if it was ours. We would connect with services and get them to come out. We’ve been steady calling and they’re not doing it? We would help the client call [the city building inspector] to get them to come out”. [Sarah]

This shows participants delegated enforcement costs to local government. By leaning on the PHA, caseworkers used the state to combat opportunism by HF clients. This defended the reputation of HF and allowed caseworkers to access quality units for clients. Local governments also challenged negligent landlords by threatening their financial interests by withholding rent or imposing fines for building code violations. This helped balance power inequities at bottom of Springfield County’s rental market.

Lastly, respondents delegated enforcement costs to non-profit organizations. Non-profit organizations provide manifold services that supplement the housing counselling assistance that HF caseworkers delivered. Participants contacted these organizations to deal with enforcement costs that their clients experienced. One respondent said they requested helped from an intermediary group to pressure negligent landlords:

“[Salvation Army] has a program where clients can work with the landlord to kind of say, ‘We’re going to withhold rent for a month until these specific things are fixed’.” [Sean]

Others asked legal aid clinics to help evicted clients. This delegated enforcement cost to an attorney who minimized the financial impact of a clients’ lease violation(s) and/or stopped the landlord from exaggerating the cost of their clients’ opportunism:

“I talk to legal aid to see if there’s a way for us to lower some of the judgments that usually come associated with the evictions … A lot of my clients will have to pay it back … Some of them don’t have payees to help them with that. So, if there’s any way to lower it or come to a different agreement, I like to call legal aid and seek some guidance on that”. [Aiden]

Most participants had a postgraduate degree in social work and/or several years of experience in homeless services. This gave them knowledge about local services that they used to delegate enforcement costs. The services provided by Salvation Army gave clients without a representative payee leverage against negligent landlords whilst the legal clinic helped evicted clients combat landlord opportunism. Both agencies allowed caseworkers to delegate enforcement costs by outsourcing service delivery.

Discussion & Conclusion

This paper answered the question: How do HF caseworkers mediate landlord-tenant conflicts? (Coase 1960) differentiates three transaction costs – search, bargaining, and enforcement – that may surface during repeated, uncertain, idiosyncratic transactions. A private let is an idiosyncratic market exchange that exposes co-signers (i.e. landlord and tenant) to opportunism. I analysed enforcement costs that emerged whilst HF recipients got rehoused in private lets and strategies that HF caseworkers used to manage lease violations by either co-signer. My analysis showed HF caseworkers managed landlord-tenant conflicts by absorbing or delegating enforcement costs in different situations.

Returning to Figure 1, participants absorbed enforcement costs for landlords by collecting information about their clients’ tenancy. When respondents verified a landlord’s complaint, they confronted the tenant’s opportunism (i.e. lease violations). This included efforts to resocialize clients by teaching them the rules of consumption in private rental markets. During this process, participants educated landlords about the needs of HF recipients to sustain their clients’ tenancy. If these efforts failed to change a client’s behaviour, respondents deterred eviction by removing the person from the landlord’s unit via a mutual lease termination. Alternatively, participants absorbed enforcement costs for tenants by contacting landlords about maintenance requests. If the landlord did not fix the problem, then some respondents withheld rent and/or refused to renew the lease on their clients’ behalf. During these situations, some participants absorbed their clients’ enforcement costs by mediating landlord-tenant communication and/or challenging racial discrimination from landlords.

I also showed some HF respondents delegated enforcement costs when they could no longer absorb them. When a tenant habitually violated their lease, some participants delegated enforcement costs to landlords by helping clients secretly violate their lease. This strategy was commonly used to sustain the tenancy of clients who were not ready to stop using drugs. In extreme cases, respondents recommended landlords call the police or evict their clients who habitually violated their lease. At other times, participants delegated enforcement cost management to local governments. For example, some respondents told landlords to call the County PHA to address rent non-payment. They alternatively contacted the city’s building inspector to compel maintenance repairs by negligent landlords. Lastly, participants delegated enforcement costs to non-profit agencies to deal with negligent landlords. Some asked a non-profit agency to withhold rent payment until landlords answered maintenance requests whilst others asked legal aid to help evicted clients challenge opportunistic landlords. Although delegation undermined the reputation of HF if they made landlords enforce the lease, it also corrected power imbalances that disadvantaged poor tenants by challenging negligent and/or abusive landlords.

My findings made a theoretical contribution to housing counselling and HF implementation research. Recent studies showed private landlords exercise power by controlling access to housing units (Desmond 2012). Housing counselling services are a scarce resource that poor renters can use to gain power (Cunningham et al. 2010) and access desired housing in low-poverty neighbourhoods (Bergman et al. 2023). Past research showed housing counselling services are integral to HF casework (Stergiopoulos et al. 2016; Watson, Wagner, and Rivers 2013), but they lack a theoretical framework to connect findings from different studies. I advanced those studies by using TCE to conceptualize housing counselling services and differentiating two ways (i.e. absorption and delegation) HF caseworkers manage enforcement costs (Coase 1960). This specified unique characteristics of the contractual relationship HF caseworkers mediate, risks each co-signer get exposed to during the lease, nature of landlord-tenant conflicts in these situations, and strategies caseworkers use to manage those problems. Doing so allowed me to account for a broader range of housing counselling services that just discipline (Grainger 2022) or paternalism (Parsell and Marston 2016). And it facilitated novel comparisons/contrasts that can open new avenues of inquiry in the housing governance literature.

I also made three empirical contributions. First, I extended research on HF implementation by giving a more nuanced account of housing counselling services. Previous studies have narrowly interpreted these services as disciplinary interventions (Grainger 2022) and paternalistic support (Parsell and Marston 2016). I advanced that research by analysing the way caseworkers absorbed enforcement costs for clients by confronting negligent landlords and providing a more thorough depiction of tactics that other studies had only noted (Henwood, Stanhope, and Padgett 2011; Stergiopoulos et al. 2016; Watson, Wagner, and Rivers 2013). I also extended research on housing counselling services. That has focussed on how caseworkers help HCV recipients access low-poverty neighbourhoods (e.g. Bergman et al. 2023). This is relevant to HF because most of these service recipients lease-up with a voucher. My analysis showed housing counselling delivered by HF caseworkers goes beyond service referrals (Cunningham et al. 2010) to include tenancy guidance, conflict mediation, and eviction prevention. This is a unique component of HF casework that differentiates it from the services given to ordinary HCV recipients. Finally, I advanced research on landlord-tenant relations. Previous studies showed some landlords abuse their power by ignoring maintenance requests, harassing indebted tenants, and evicting people for asinine reasons (Desmond 2012; Garboden and Rosen 2019). My analysis extended those findings by showing housing counselling services can keep poor renters housed by challenging negligent and/or abusive landlords.

My observations have several policy implications. The first recommendation is for the U.S. Government to expand subsided housing developments in low-poverty neighbourhoods. Respondents said their clients needed quality units in areas where they were not exposed to vice. Because the rental market lacked those options, clients often resided in high-poverty areas where they struggled to overcome personal struggles. Poor recovery increased the probability of enforcement costs and undermined the willingness of landlords to lease-up HF clients. Expanding affordable housing options in low-poverty neighbourhoods would help address this problem. Federal authorities can do this by devoting more resources to the Housing Trust Fund and/or increasing Low-Income Tax Credits. Relatedly, the public sector can reduce evictions by expanding single-site supportive housing. Participants said some high acuity clients got evicted if they were referred to a scattered-site PSH. A shortage of single-site PSH made caseworkers delegate enforcement costs to keep clients housed and undermined their relationship with landlords. Increasing the supply of single-site PSH would fix this problem. Whilst it is inescapable that single-site PSH will concentrate some HF clients, the potential for these developments to concentrate poverty can be allayed by building them in low-poverty areas and/or moving clients into scattered-site units once they get stabilized. The positive impact this strategy would have on programme implementation and outcomes would outweigh any costs. National, state, and local governments can stop landlord negligence in a few ways. By expanding affordable housing supplies, governments can motivate unit upkeep by reducing the monopoly negligent landlords have on service providers. Governments should also invest in poor neighbourhoods. This would increase property values in poor neighbourhoods and give private landlords a financial reason to make the repairs. A final thing local governments can do is increase the penalties for landlord negligence and expand opportunities for tenants to report opportunism.

Three limitations of this study should be noted. First, I did not observe the actions described by participants. Funding constraints prevented me from travelling to the field site on a regular basis to observe caseworkers. Although I triangulated each theme, the analysis is weakened by my inability to specify conditions under which each strategy was used. Second, I recruited participants from 6 of 15 agencies that provided HF case management. I am uncertain if these agencies differed from those who contributed to the study. This may have reduced the richness of my data analysis. Third, the study’s validity is limited because I neither used multiple coders nor conducted member checks with participants. Adding another coder was not possible because I conducted this study alone. Given the large amount of data collected I collected, I could not get a colleague to help me code the interviews. I did not do member checks because I had lost contact with participants and did not feel comfortable asking them to comment on papers during the pandemic.

My findings suggests three directions for future research. First, this study was conducted in a U.S. rental market where caseworkers primarily used rental vouchers and private lets. This is different from HF in countries where service providers rely on social housing (Clarke, Parsell, and Vorsina 2020). Future research could examine landlord-tenant mediation in social housing markets to understand constraints on HF implementation and the strategies caseworkers use to balance competing interests in those situations. Second, future research could examine landlord engagement in tight U.S. rental markets where case managers are less able to use rental vouchers. These are interesting cases because caseworkers are more constrained. This raises questions about the ability of HF to function as a reintegration tool across economic contexts. Third, for the sake of clarity, I focussed on enforcement costs. Future research could extend TCE to early stages of the lease to understand the ways HF caseworkers manage search and bargaining costs.

Availability of Data and Material

Masked data is available upon request.

Code Availability

Not applicable.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded by the Institute for Research on Poverty, Mellon Foundation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Crowe Scholarship, and John DeLamater Award.

Notes

1. This definition excludes somebody who has lived in an institutional setting (i.e. jail, hospital, and mental health facility) for more than 90 days and met the listed criteria before entering the facility. The definition includes families with a head of household who meets the listed criteria even if the composition of their household changed during an episode of homelessness.

2. Government and non-profit housing providers also screen applicants. I focus on private landlords here because that is the stakeholder who study participants in this paper engaged.

3. In the USA, a household is rent burdened if it devotes more than 30% of its income to rent.

4. This is a broader application of TCE than has been used in the past. Quigley (2002) identified four types of transaction costs that renters confront: search, legal, administrative, and adjustment costs. Although Quigley’s analysis included discussion about renters, his primary concern was homeowners. It therefore lacked a thorough analysis of opportunism by landlords and/or tenants throughout the lease. Moreover, Quigley used TCE to develop an econometric model for hypothesis testing. I instead used TCE as a sensitizing framework to conceptualize strategies that HF caseworkers use to manage enforcement costs. This paper thus extends Quigley’s work by offering a more nuanced account of enforcement costs in rental markets and an analysis of third-party efforts to manage enforcement costs during the lease.

5. This does not mean the County PHA only provided HF services. The organization managed a small public housing stock and larger HCV programme.

6. “Public housing” refers to units owned by the government while “social housing” refers to units owned by non-profit orgs.

7. Although interviewees did this, withholding rent is illegal in some places.