How To: Correcting Data About Eviction
One of the most serious problems today in housing isn’t eviction but misinformation about eviction, especially about what eviction is, its high costs for housing providers, and especially how many actual removals there are in a community. The Eviction Lab is a prime source of this misinformation.
The Eviction Lab has taken a single year of eviction data and assigned a “rate” of eviction to dozens of communities. The sources of this data are unclear. Was 2016 better or worse for eviction that the ten years before or four years after? Nobody in the media asks this question.
Worse, it’s hard to tell what numbers are being used to calculate the rate of eviction, essentially dividing the number of rental housing units by the number of evictions. Remember, evictions take a long time to complete and often don’t result in removal. The Eviction Lab’s data doesn’t include any refinement or nuance about the disposition of cases.
So how do you fight bad housing policy premised on dubious eviction data? Do the math! In Dayton the Eviction Lab’s ranking falls dramatically when the divided by the number of rental housing units in the United States Census use by HUD.
Dayton Case Study
“With one of the highest eviction rates in the country [26th in the country], Dayton city leaders set out to do something about it last year with the formation of an Eviction Task Force.” – from a media report in Dayton based on Eviction Lab data.[1]
| Eviction in Dayton | Evictions | Housing Units | Average | Eviction Ranking |
| Eviction Lab | 1,584 | 26,667 | 5.94% | 26th |
| Actual Numbers[2] | 1,584 | 124,300 | 1.27% | 100+ |
Talking Points
- Eviction has a high cost for housing providers and they want to avoid it;
- While eviction is a bad outcome, fortunately it is relatively rare;
- The solution for eviction isn’t improving legal defenses but prevention;
- Prevention includes direct cash relief for households with income issues;
- More supply means more options for residents unhappy with their housing;
[1] “Dayton Has A Plan To Lower Its Eviction Rate,” reported by Ann Thompson, WVXU Radio, Dayton, Ohio, July 2020
[2] The Eviction Lab does not make public the numbers it uses to calculate the number of rental housing units. This data is from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Based on this data, Dayton has an eviction rate lower than any measured in their ranking which ends at the top 100. See https://www.huduser.gov/portal/publications/pdf/DaytonOH-comp-17.pdf