Moving from Conflict to Collaboration to Prevent Evictions

Episode Notes

Transcript

Neil Steinkamp:

There’s a consistency in the message that we hear from landlords all over the country that we just need a better system and that the system needs to be outside the court system. This shouldn’t be a, how can we better respond to eviction question, but how can we avoid eviction filings in the first place?

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Equal access to justice is a core American value. In each episode of Talk Justice an An LSC Podcast, we’ll explore ways to expand access to justice and illustrate why it is important to the legal community, business government, and the General Public Talk. Justice is sponsored by the Leaders Council of the Legal Services Corporation.

Ron Flagg:

So we’re about to have a conversation about a topic that’s familiar to all of us, and that is evictions. 40% of the cases closed by LSC grantees are in the housing category, and many, if not, most of those are evictions. But this is not going to be a same old conversation. You’ve heard about evictions for a number of years. This is going to be a new conversation. We usually frame evictions in terms of conflict, conflict between landlords and tenants, conflicts between legal aid and landlords. And I’d like us to all take the opportunity today to start rethinking about eviction in terms of collaboration. So the title of this session is Essential Partnerships, landlords and Legal Aid in the Eviction Crisis. And as I said, we’re rethinking about how we even talk about this topic to the extent we talk about legal aid and landlords in the past.

That’s usually in terms of unlikely allies. And as we’re going to hear today, it’s really imperative for us to begin to recognize that landlords and legal aid are already already essential partners in keeping people housed, keeping businesses strong, and keeping communities stable. So I’m looking forward to this conversation today, and as John alluded to, and I’m going to visually share with you now, we are releasing today this brief Beyond Evictions Landlords as Essential Partners in Housing Stability. You will see it on a social media site near you today or in the next few days, as well as on the LSC website. So please take a look at it. The brief is the latest in a series of projects related to our congressionally directed study on evictions, which we’ll also be releasing in the next several weeks. At LSC, we see the eviction crisis not just as a legal challenge, but a human and economic issue as well.

We know that success should not be measured simply in terms of winning a case. Success is should be measured as never needing to file an eviction in the first place. And to get to that success, we need all voices, legal aid, landlords, policymakers, all at the same table, sharing responsibility and re-imagining the system that has not served us well in the last five years. And before that, we have two people with us today who have been re-imagining eviction, Neil Steinkamp and Ama Romaine Neil is a leading expert in housing and eviction systems with deep experience across the country helping cities build better solutions. He brings both a national lens and a systems perspective to our conversation today. And Ama is General counsel at Progress Residential, a company in Georgia. Her background is in hospitality and business, and that background has shaped a people-centered approach to housing. And her leadership in partnering with Legal Aid is helping us to create new pathways to stability for thousands of renters. So let’s kick things off, Ama. You’ve said that eviction is not a successful business practice. You couldn’t tell that from the volume of evictions being filed. So why do you say that?

Ama Romaine:

So it’s a fair question and I feel like sometimes we have to take a step back. So I think if we look at the post covid environment, so during Covid, we know that we had eviction moratoria. I think everyone agrees and understands that that was appropriate at the time. There were many companies like mine at the time where I worked and companies I’ve worked at since including this one, that because of our size, we were able to extend eviction moratoria beyond what was required by law. And in DC we see the consequences of that, right? So unfortunately, what the reality is, we all want the same things people. We want people to be stably housed, for people to be stably housed, it takes money. So we need these homes to be paid for in some way. And I realize we all realize that there are times when the people living in the homes are going to be facing circumstances that make it challenging for them to pay.

So those things are all true. Coming out of COD, we had huge numbers of homes that were occupied by people who were not paying. And that was a challenge. Landlords can’t maintain homes the way they need to be maintained if they’re not being paid for. And so I think what happened was the covid cliff, then you had all of these eviction filings that took place, right? There was a significant increase in filings across the country. And I think we are now in the phase where we have to press pause and really think about what does normal look like in this new world? And some of that normal means we don’t have the funding that was available during the covid years. And I think we have to have honest conversations about that. Where are we going to get the money? Where are we going to get the funding?

And then the other thing is, and I come from hospitality as you mentioned, and I think it’s pretty obvious for in the hotel context, hotels are real estate houses are real estate hotels know that their guests have to pay their guests. We need guests, right? If a hotel is empty, it’s not making money. I think it’s not always obvious to people that if a house is empty, it’s also not making money. And so we need people living in homes who are paying. It’s really that simple. And evictions are expensive to file, and when you file an eviction, it’s not obvious to people, but the person who you file an eviction on cannot necessarily go somewhere else and live. So you actually disincentivize them from paying. Why would you pay if you can’t go somewhere else? So you stay in the home and then you’re sort of waiting it out.

And so what we’ve been talking about with Neil and Legal Aid and the Atlanta volunteer lawyers like everyone frankly who would listen, is that we really need to find solutions. We have to think about how we can get in front of the eviction filing, right? And how we can get people back to stable ground sooner so that we can get money flowing again. And that frankly, that people are just stable. When housing is unstable, the impacts are significant. So this year it was just reported that in Georgia we have 9,000 school aged children who are living in hotels. And I don’t think people realize that homelessness is not just on the streets. We have families that are living in hotels and motels across this country, and that’s not sustainable.

Ron Flagg:

Neil, I see you at different locations across the country, seemingly at every conference I attend. So I know you have not a single local perspective, but a national perspective is what AM’s describing. Is this a one-off or something broader than that?

Neil Steinkamp:

Yeah, thanks Ron. We have had the opportunity to work in a number of jurisdictions, as you’ve mentioned, looking at eviction ecosystems and in all of that work across the country have the chance to talk with, of course, the legal services community, talking directly to tenants facing eviction. But we are very committed to making sure that we talk with other stakeholders as well across the ecosystem, but including the landlord community. And in those conversations that we have across the country, everything that Amad just said fits very consistent, right? Landlords will often talk to us about, we’re often looking at the role of legal representation for tenants, and nothing I think we talk about today is going to take from the importance of that. There will always be eviction cases, there will always be eviction filings, and there will always be a need for lawyers representing those tenants.

However, many of the landlords are happy to talk about that and the role of that and how that can be effective. And oftentimes landlords that we’re talking to are very supportive of that. They appreciate that once we’re in that system, it can be very helpful and important for the tenant to have a lawyer assisting them. But they’ll also often say, Neil, as much as I’m willing to have that conversation, the conversation I really want to have is how we can avoid that in the first place. I don’t want to be in that system. That is the system I have to use. If something gets to a certain stage, I’m trying to not do that. But there are times when I have no other option and that system doesn’t work for me. The summary proceeding system process, they will say it doesn’t work from the landlord’s perspective that it is costly, as am said, it is time consuming.

I’m not going to collect the rent on this. So that time is just accruing additional rent. And they will say, it’s not only not good for me financially from a business perspective, but what it means is I will, if I’m going to continue to be a housing provider, I’m going to need to increase my rents, or I’m going to need to do additional screening, or I’m going to need to have more security deposit. Because if I don’t have a guest, as Ama said, I think it’s a great analogy to the hotel industry. If I don’t have a guest, then I need to raise my rates for the times that I do have guests in the home if I’m going to be able to do what I’m doing. Many of the landlords I talked to will say, I understand the challenges of the low income family, that there are going to be fluctuations in their life, that we need to provide elasticity and flexibility.

We can do that, but it can only go so far before I’m not able to pay the mortgage I have on this home to be able to provide housing for people. So there does seem to be, as you were alluding to in your question, Ron, there’s a consistency in the message that we hear from landlords all over the country that we just need a better system and that the system needs to be outside the court system. This shouldn’t be a, how can we better respond to eviction question, but how can we avoid eviction filings in the first place?

Ron Flagg:

So Ama, you’ve used the term collaborative adversaries, and at least outside of the context of this conversation, I might’ve thought that to be an oxymoron. What do you mean by that?

Ama Romaine:

So the classic example was we were in a phase of what I call return to normal systems are created. So the system is you’re filing evictions, not because I don’t even like using the term evictions, but we were filing evictions and I was relatively new to the role, but in one of my attorney’s flag that we had several cases in North Carolina where legal aid was on the other side. And that was a flag for me. I thought, well, legal aid is not going to be on the other side if they didn’t think there was some validity to those cases. So something must be going on. Let’s do a little bit more research. And then I said, we should just go talk to them. We should go talk to Legal Aid and understand what they’re seeing in our cases, what they think the trends are, what are we not seeing?

Because the way our system works, our legal team wasn’t, we aren’t actively engaged in the filing of evictions. That runs through our collections team as we met with Legal Aid and another AV LF in Atlanta, and we started just having conversations about what they see, what they didn’t like about our business, what their perceptions were of our business specifically. And then we just talked about, we started talking about what solutions can look like and one of them is how can we work together to identify people who are at risk, who are needing some help? Something that I didn’t necessarily believe when I first heard this sort of just challenging our own collections team is that when people are facing instability, they really don’t want to talk to their landlord. And so the fact that we call is, we may call, but it’s a collections call.

And so no one really wants to take the call because if they could pay the rent, they would’ve paid the rent. So I think what we’re really, really trying to figure out is what is the path? What is the path to making it possible for people to have access? Have access, know that they can get some help, know that they can have someone who might be able to advocate for them and help them sort of navigate a tough time. And sometimes the solution is we need to find a different path, we need to find a different place. This place might be unaffordable given what’s happened in your life. And those are hard conversations, but we can have them. So that’s what I think of as collaborative adversaries. I mean, we’re an opposite size in that we represent different clients, and I am obviously interested in making sure that our homes are cash flowing, but we can do that in a way that is sensitive to and mindful of the needs of the humans who are in our homes and the communities that we’re operating in.

Ron Flagg:

Neil, what does success look like in this system as you envision it?

Neil Steinkamp:

One of the interesting opportunities when we think about the type of processes and changes that Ama was just talking about, centered on communication, building trust, enabling resolution of delinquency and issues with a household before having to file for eviction and even referral to a lawyer in situations where maybe there is a legal issue, maybe there’s a dispute about the ledger, there’s opportunities to resolve that and still not need to file for an eviction. So there’s a tremendous amount of work that can be done upstream to resolve these issues. If we can facilitate greater communication and trust among the parties that are doing that and hopefully help people, one, understand how this process is going to go, but also that there is a pathway to resolution that doesn’t require eviction, not just from the landlord’s side, but helping the tenant understand, look, there’s a different way.

We don’t have to go through that process. Let’s talk about what the budget looks like, why you haven’t been able to pay your rent. How do we help find different pathway here? It might be staying, it might be trying to negotiate a move out, but having more time to do that and having accrued less back rent is going to be essential. So one of the interesting primary ways in which we can think about success here is just a reduction in the number of eviction filings, which presents a really great opportunity because that can be done one at the individual landlord level. So Ama’s team can be saying, I just want to reduce the number of eviction filings we have. And of course you can do that at a local level too, to see if the number of eviction filings goes down. That’s moving us away from a high volume model, which many, that’s a phrase that many of us in this room are going to be really familiar with our high volume courts that we’ve become accustomed to.

I often hear from the courts that they’d really prefer to be low volume courts. Well, how do you do that? The courts are going to have a hard time effectuating that because they’re dealing with what’s coming in. The question is can we reduce what’s coming into the court system? I think there’s a really important role for legal aid to have in that system as well in that pre-filing resolution process, but I think that’s a key element of success. And then after that, you have all of the other forms of success that we’ve worked on and developed, and that this whole room has really pioneered in terms of trying to understand the value of housing stability. And I think there’s a lot of success metrics, both from the landlord perspective, from a financial perspective, but also from the tenant’s perspective in terms of housing stability, and of course the fiscal impact, which I know you’ll hear about in a later panel.

Ama Romaine:

Can I just respond to that? One of the things we started doing this year as we think more about resident stability is testing to Neil’s point, how we can have fewer evictions going through the funnel. We just have to have fewer going in on our end. And if you’re going to open your homes to families who have lower income or they might be a little less stable if their credit scores are not as strong, then we have to be creative about mechanisms for payment. And so one of the things that we’ve been noticing that we tested is just filing evictions later in the month. And what we saw is a decrease in the number of evictions that we had to file and a higher cure rate. So the number of people who cure is higher. And I actually think that’s because if we filed evictions a little later, then they were going to pay.

They just need to pay differently. And I have my own personal story with that. I was renting when I first moved to Atlanta last year, and I still had my home here, and I was going back and forth and one month it was Labor Day weekend, I forgot to pay my rent, and I would not have thought much of it because frankly, I didn’t realize before this job that evictions get filed within five days in most places, right? Three to five days it could be filed. And when I realized it was past day five and I was like, oh my gosh, am I going to have an eviction on my record? My landlord was very kind and they did not file the eviction. They kept emailing me and I kept not responding for a minute. But I think that’s part of the issue. We really do have to, that is just, it’s pretty onerous, frankly.

And life happens. Things can happen to people in a month that causes them not to be able to pay or just forget to pay. And I think if we think all landlords, frankly, just think about how we might be able to assume the best. Not all landlords are bad and not all residents are bad, and we really do have to try to create systems that work for the 80 or the 90% and recognize that there are 10% of the people who will try to abuse the system, but we can’t create a system for that 10%.

Ron Flagg:

Well, that all sounds pretty good to me, but how do you get business? Buy into what you just described?

Ama Romaine:

It’s the math. Neil spoke about this, and he’s seeing this all across the country. The numbers don’t work on evictions. It’s expensive. If you have someone in the home who’s not paying, it’s expensive to file an eviction. It’s expensive to remove people’s belongings from a home, and then it’s expensive to get the home ready for the new resident, and all of that cost is born by the owner of the home, right? We’re property managers, so we’re not, actually, we make money too, but the owner, the investor, they’re not going to make money if evictions is the way that we’re managing residents who are less stable, right? The goal is to get people in the houses paying and staying.

Ron Flagg:

What we’ve heard today is a different kind of housing conversation. We’ve heard that eviction is not a successful business model. We’ve heard that legal aid is not just about litigation. It should be about problem solving, communication, and trust. And we’ve heard that win is not necessarily a favorable court ruling. It can also be and should be a family that stays housed, a landlord that stays afloat, a neighborhood that stays whole Legal aid must be seen not only as a community safety net, but as a core part of the housing infrastructure. We need to invest not just in legal services for tenants and crisis, but in partnerships that prevent crisis in the first place. My thanks to Neil and Ama for this conversation and for their leadership in innovating in this space. Please join me in thanking them.

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