Hello my darlings! I have been a busy bee since I last checked in. I had a virtual visit with a psychologist who told me I have major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder after talking with him for 5 minutes. He prescribed me an SSRI. I took it for a few weeks, then got very anxious about it and stopped. Counterintuitive, right? Not taking a medicine that is supposed to make me less anxious because….it made me anxious? I truly contain multitudes.
Anyway, I have been working on being more consistent on my care tasks and it has been amazing to see how the simplest things can make a huge impact on my mood. Tis the season for me to act out and alter my body in some way, so I have pierced my nose (third time’s a charm). Only time will tell if this one works out; if not, it is just truly not meant to be.
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Things are still quite bleak at work. Nothing has changed in Indiana law since my last update, so people are still being evicted in droves. Indiana is one of the most landlord friendly states in the country and has 3 cities in the Top Evicting Large Cities in the United States: Fort Wayne (13th), Indianapolis (14th), and South Bend (18th).*
(*Source: Eviction Lab, https://evictionlab.org/rankings/#/evictions?r=United%20States&a=0&d=evictionRate&lang=en)
After repeatedly being asked the same questions by tenants facing eviction and not having the information to answer them, I kicked around the idea of an eviction data collection project in my local court. I know that sounds boring, but eviction data is not aggregated in any substantial way at a local level. This makes it incredibly difficult to see the big picture and limits what housing advocates can say about the impact of state laws on tenants.
The most reliable eviction data advocates in Indiana have access to is gathered by Princeton’s Eviction Lab. This project relies heavily on information gathered directly from courts and is the first nationwide data infrastructure to track eviction information. This is incredibly useful, but it can’t explain what happens in the courtroom. Their data answers questions like “which states/counties/cities have the highest eviction rates?” and allows stakeholders to determine how many individuals are being displaced. It doesn’t go deep enough to give advocates in the housing space the information they need to understand how state and local laws play out in courts and impact tenants.
Enter the St. Joseph County Eviction Court Watch Project. My goal for this project was to be able to accomplish main three goals:
- Answer the questions like ‘how long does the average eviction hearing last,’ “are tenants always allowed to give their side of the story,’ and the likes.
- Connect tenants facing eviction with opportunities to get free legal assistance.
- Determine what type of information tenants need to feel able to advocate for themselves in the courtroom.
Since the beginning of the project, I have personally sat in the Small Claims Court in South Bend for 20 weeks and counting. While there, I complete a worksheet of my design for each case to track data points that can shed light on specific aspects of the process. I have now watched over 500 eviction hearings and have compiled a dataset that tracks 64 variables for 655 eviction cases (ick). With the guidance and support from the legendary Judy Fox, the project has already illuminated several flaws in the system that can be used to advocate for changes.
99% of the time, eviction in Indiana is the result of non-payment of rent. The consolidation of property to those with privilege (and large companies) have left those without in a situation where they have no options. Having an eviction on your record makes it much more difficult to find a new rental. If a person is too poor to rent and too poor to take out a mortgage, there is no viable housing alternative available to them. The way we have built our society has ignored this, leaving them to live in their cars, with friends/family, or the street.
Consider the following policy:
Imagine all of our political leaders and institutions decided to always act in the best interest of the collective good (i.e. treat all people like our historical/current government treats white people). Imagine the government (state or federal, doesn’t matter) is allowed to buy up an unlimited number of vacant properties densely populated areas and convert them into livable units. In this alternate reality, the government would set the rent at 30% of a person’s income much like a housing voucher, but with no income limitations so anyone can rent them. In doing so, the government has added to the housing stock in the community and set rent at an affordable level. According to the economic principles of supply and demand, this approach would make the rental market more competitive, forcing landlords to lower the rent on their units to remain competitive.
Does that policy make you uncomfortable? Why or why not? There are legitimate reasons for being skeptical of the government, but in an ideal world our government would be as our imaginary hypothetical government: willing to do what it takes to truly care about ALL its citizens. It is up to us to reimagine how we structure our networks of care and we cannot do that without overcoming our preconceived notions of how society works.
If this makes you uncomfortable and you can’t put your finger on why, that is understandable. Growing up in the United States, the concepts of private ownership and individual responsibility are so engrained in our education, tax, and social systems. We have a hard time thinking outside of that structure if we aren’t faced with situations that challenge them (and we can talk about propaganda later). Our society is riddled with complex problems that threaten people’s wellbeing every day. Such problems require creative solutions. People living in poverty, especially those facing housing instability, are forced to make impossible decisions every day. We owe it to them to think outside the box.
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Why should you care about this? Here are some things I observed:
- Several landlords proudly thanked the court for granting their eviction, because now they can increase the rent on the unit. Rents are increasing EVERYWHERE. If people are unable to pay rents as they are now, housing instability is only going to get worse.
- 67 percent of eviction hearings happen in 5 minutes or less. In less time than it takes you to boil water for a box of mac and cheese, a family will lose their home in a court proceeding.
- If you are behind in rent in any way, you can be evicted in the state of Indiana. Don’t believe me? Ask the woman who was evicted over nonpayment of her $7 rent.
- Eviction is meant to be a process that any person can navigate without an attorney. It took me, a person with an advanced degree and a background in thinking in legal systems, 5 MONTHS working full time to understand it enough to truly understand how it works. Talk about access to justice…
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Want to learn more about the data? You can see more here.