PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Peter Hepburn
AU  - Jacob Haas
AU  - Nick Graetz
AU  - Renee Louis
AU  - Devin Q. Rutan
AU  - Anne Kat Alexander
AU  - Jasmine Rangel
AU  - Olivia Jin
AU  - Emily Benfer
AU  - Matthew Desmond
TI  - Protecting the Most Vulnerable: Policy Response and Eviction Filing Patterns During the COVID-19 Pandemic
AID  - 10.7758/RSF.2023.9.3.08
DP  - 2023 May 01
TA  - RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
PG  - 186--207
VI  - 9
IP  - 3
4099  - http://www.rsfjournal.org/content/9/3/186.short
4100  - http://www.rsfjournal.org/content/9/3/186.full
AB  - The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic crisis exposed the U.S. rental housing market to extraordinary stress. Policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels established eviction moratoria and a number of additional direct and indirect renter-supportive measures in a bid to prevent a surge in evictions and associated public health risks. This article assesses the net efficacy of these interventions, analyzing changes in eviction filing patterns in 2020–2021 in thirty-one cities across the country. We find that eviction filings were dramatically reduced over this period. The largest reductions were in places that previously experienced highest eviction filing rates, particularly majority-Black and low-income neighborhoods. Although these changes did not ameliorate racial, gender, and income inequalities in relative risk of eviction, they did significantly reduce rates across the board, resulting in especially large absolute gains in previously high-risk communities.