Evictions, large owners, and serial filings: findings from Atlanta

Abstract

Evictions cause substantial harm to lower-income families and neighborhoods. We find that eviction filings include many ‘serial filings’, in which landlords file repeatedly on the same tenant. We analyze serial and nonserial filing rates at the property level, and the share of a property’s filings that are serial filings. Regressions on building, location, and neighborhood characteristics reveal factors associated with higher serial and nonserial filing rates and serial share. We find that the largest owners and larger buildings tend to have high serial shares. When looking at nonserial filings, which are more likely to result in tenant displacement, neighborhood race is a strong independent predictor; properties in Black neighborhoods have substantially higher nonserial filing rates, other things equal. Another key result is that sales in the prior three years have a significant, nontrivial positive effect on the nonserial filing rate, so that property turnover is a significant predictor of rising evictions. We discuss implications for policy and further research.

Keywords:

• Evictions
• housing
• rental housing
• housing instability
• housing insecurity

Acknowledgements

We thank the Atlanta Journal Constitution for sharing the eviction and property data used in this study. We also thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. All errors, omissions and opinions are solely the responsibility of the authors of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 To identify comparison counties from the 20 largest metropolitan areas, we identified counties in these metros for which the Eviction Lab had eviction filing rate and eviction rate data. We then screened out counties that had population densities greater than 4,000 people per square mile or less than 1,400 per square mile. (The five core counties range from 1,748 to 2,586 persons per square mile.) This left us with the 22 comparison counties.

2 For a detailed description of the eviction process in Georgia, see Raymond et al. (2018).

3 Raymond et al. (2018) found that, in 2015 in Fulton County (the largest of the 5 metro counties examined here), eviction filing rates were 28 per 100 units, compared to 7 per 100 for single-family rentals.

4 For Fulton County, instead of using 2016 appraised values, 2017 values were used. Fulton County did not reassess properties from 2011 through 2016, so 2017 appraised values were deemed more accurate estimates of 2016 market values than 2016 appraised values.