Corpus ID: 160028759

The Effects of Evictions on Low-Income Households

@inproceedings{Collinson2018TheEO,
  title={The Effects of Evictions on Low-Income Households},
  author={Rob Collinson and Davin Kristopher Reed},
  year={2018}
}

• Rob Collinson, D. Reed
• Published 2018

Each year in the U.S., more than two million renter households report being at risk of eviction, yet there is little causal evidence on how evictions affect low-income households. We assemble novel data linking individuals from housing court cases in New York City to administrative data and leverage the random assignment of cases to courtrooms to estimate the causal effect of evictions on homelessness, health, earnings, employment, and public assistance receipt. Evictions cause large and persistent increases in risk of homelessness, elevate long-term residential instability, and increase emergency room use. We find some evidence that evictions lower earnings modestly, but little evidence that they substantially worsen employment outcomes or increase receipt of public assistance. These results suggest that eviction prevention policies could provide important consumption smoothing benefits to low-income households but are unlikely to substantially reduce poverty on their own. ∗Corresponding author: [e-mail] (New York University, Wagner School of Public Service, 295 Lafayette Street New York, NY 10012) †[e-mail] (Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Community Development and Regional Outreach Department, 10 N Independence Mall W, Philadelphia, PA 19106) ‡Collinson is grateful to Ingrid Gould Ellen, Jens Ludwig, Kathy O’Regan and Dan O’Flaherty for their advice and guidance. We thank Eileen Johns and Maryanne Schretzman at the Center for Innovation through Data Intelligence. We also thank Eric Chyn, Kevin Corinth, Peter Ganong, Francisca Richter, and Tatiana Homonoff for helpful comments, and seminar participants for their valuable feedback. Collinson gratefully acknowledges funding support from the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The views expressed here are those of the authors and should not be construed as representing those of the Office of Court Administration, the New York City Human Resource Administration, or the Center for Innovation through Data Intelligence. The views expressed here are not those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia or the Federal Reserve System.