Housing Stability, Evictions, and Subsidized Rental Properties: Evidence From Metro Atlanta, Georgia

ABSTRACT

Evictions cause substantial harm to lower income families. Housing subsidy might be expected to reduce eviction rates and provide greater stability. However, little research has examined the eviction rates of subsidized, affordable rental properties. We examine eviction filings for multifamily rental buildings in five-county metropolitan Atlanta, using a data set of eviction filings, property characteristics, and ownership information. We find that senior, subsidized multifamily properties have substantially lower eviction rates than market-rate properties do. A senior, subsidized multifamily rental building is expected to have an annual eviction rate that is 10.7 percentage points below that of a nonsenior, market-rate property; this result is significant (p < .01) and compares with a mean eviction filing rate of 16.3% (16.3 evictions per 100 rental units). On the other hand, a nonsenior subsidized building is expected to have an eviction rate that is 1.4 percentage points lower than a nonsenior market-rate building; this result is not statistically significant. We do not have data on the economic characteristics of tenants, and that may account for some of the relatively high eviction rates of the nonsenior-affordable properties. We discuss the implications of these findings for research and housing policy and practice.

KEYWORDS:

• eviction
• affordability
• low-income housing
• multifamily
• displacement

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Cherella Nicholson for excellent research assistance.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Nonserial eviction filings are those filings that exclude repeat filings on the same tenant within a 1-year period. Serial filings are those that are filed on the same tenant within the same period. Immergluck et al. (2019) show that the two different types of eviction filings exhibit somewhat distinct patterns across buildings and neighborhoods. Nonserial filings are more likely to result in the actual forced expulsion of a tenant from a rental unit.

2. 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.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Austin Harrison

Austin Harrison is a Ph.D. candidate in the Urban Studies Institute at Georgia State University. His research interests include housing policy, neighborhood change, shrinking cities, and community development. He has consulted with nonprofits and local governments across the country to implement programs and policies aimed at inclusively revitalizing neighborhoods, developing quality affordable housing, and stabilizing disinvested communities. He is also a research fellow for Innovate Memphis.

Dan Immergluck

Dan Immergluck is a professor in the Urban Studies Institute at Georgia State University. His research concerns housing, real estate, real estate finance, neighborhood change, and community and economic development. He is the author of four books, more than 60 scholarly articles, and numerous book chapters. He has consulted for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the U.S. Department of Justice, Atlanta Legal Aid, and other organizations. He has served as a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and as a senior fellow at the Center for Community Progress in Washington, DC.

Jeff Ernsthausen

Jeff Ernsthausen is a senior data reporter at ProPublica. He previously worked on the investigative team at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he investigated sexual abuse by physicians nationwide, police misconduct in Georgia and evictions in metro Atlanta. Prior to his career in journalism, he studied history and economics and worked as a financial and economic analyst at the Federal Reserve.

Stephanie Earl

Stephanie Earl is a graduate of the master’s in public policy program in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies and a former research assistant in the Urban Studies Institute at Georgia State University. She has coauthored a variety of research articles including on evictions, Black homeownership, and coastal vulnerability to sea-level rise.