How local leaders are stemming the eviction crisis
The outcomes of the more than seven million eviction cases filed in America each year can be radically different depending on where they happen. The experience of a tenant in Philadelphia, where there are currently 4 filings per 100 renter households, could vary greatly from a tenant in Las Vegas, where this rate is in double digits. This difference often relies on the policies and initiatives that elected officials have created.
Many cities are promoting eviction diversion programs and mediation initiatives. Others are trying to increase their capacity to offer legal aid. And, in some instances, schools are getting involved, trying to avoid the negative consequences of evictions on their students.
While advocates prepare for cuts in housing and social safety programs stemming from the federal government, these are four cities that have created innovative initiatives to counteract the effect that an eviction can have on their residents.
Before the pandemic, Philadelphia saw more than 22,000 eviction filings a year. Yet in 2024, landlords in that city filed fewer than 14,000 evictions. Local leaders believe the drastic drop is due to Philadelphia’s exemplary eviction diversion program.
While eviction diversion programs aren’t new, they vary in size and impact. At their core, they offer resources for landlords and tenants to find an alternative solution to the court eviction process. But Philadelphia added a spin that would bolster impact. Thanks to a City Council mandate, all landlords were required to apply to the eviction diversion program before filing an eviction case. This gives tenants more time and space to find an alternative solution to losing their homes in the court process.
Between 2020, when the eviction diversion program began, and June 2025, the initiative has had more than 81,000 landlord applicants. According to the city, it offered mediation to over 11,000 landlord-tenant pairs and reached agreements to stop an eviction in nearly 70% of cases.
Before applying, landlords are required to give tenants information on the eviction diversion program and the resources available. Once a landlord applies and is approved, the program has four pathways available: just mediation, just financial assistance, a combination of both, or direct negotiation. For example, if a case is due to repairs, the parties may be referred to mediation. But if there is back rent, they may receive direct financial assistance. Between 2020 and June 2025, More than 12,000 landlord-tenant pairs avoided eviction thanks to financial assistance with an average payment of $4,525 per pair.
Local government leaders say that the mandatory requirement is a benefit not just for landlords and tenants, but also for the efficiency of the city as a whole. Tenants can avoid an eviction filing and maintain a clean rental record. Landlords can avoid vacancies and court fees. But, more importantly, eviction court and resources for people on the brink of homelessness are reserved for the cases that need it the most. Eviction Lab’s research finds that when filing an eviction is cheap and easy for landlords, some of them rely on the courts as a tool to collect rent. This leads to some landlords repeatedly filing evictions against the same tenants in turn clogging the courts and hurting the tenants’ long term stability.
“By intervening early, it can help stabilize households, reduce filings and ease the burden on the court system and other city systems as well,” said Michal Bilick, program manager for the city’s eviction prevention programs.
The program was so successful that in 2024 the city made it permanent. Officials in charge of the program say that they know that cases can be complex, but their goal is to always find the most favorable outcome for both parties, with over 300 trained mediators willing to help solve problems. If no solution is available via the eviction diversion program, tenants can also be referred to legal aid.
Learn more about Philadelphia’s eviction diversion program here.
Every day, more than 10 households were evicted. That was the reality for North Charleston, South Carolina — the city with the most evictions according to Eviction Lab’s 2016 ranking.
“Although we are excited about being number one for a lot of things, being number one for the number of evictions is not one of the things we want to be known for,” said Alissa Lietzow, the CEO of Charleston Pro Bono Legal Services.
The ranking was a signal to policymakers and advocates in South Carolina that something needed to change, Lietzow added. And it has. Shortly after the list set into perspective the risk tenants were facing, the Supreme Court of South Carolina piloted the “housing court” model in 2019.
Instead of eviction case hearings being scheduled several times a week, this policy consists of a special docket where residential eviction cases are heard once a week in each court. Clustering the cases into a single day allows service providers to better engage with the people impacted by evictions.
On those days, tenants could find lawyers ready to help them navigate their eviction filing at no cost. This benefit is available for people with a household income of less than 80% of the area median income. In Charleston, that could be a family of four who makes less than $84,100 a year.
Today, the program is run in seven magistrate courts in Charleston County, and the model has gotten the green light from the Supreme Court of South Carolina to be replicated across the state.
The program — which is currently run by limited staff members and volunteers— aims to be an example of what’s possible if all tenants had access to legal aid. In cases where tenants show up to court, approximately 9 out of every 10 cases with legal aid avoid an eviction judgment the day of the hearing, according to Charleston Pro Bono Legal Services. But success hasn’t come without a caveat.
South Carolina is one of the few states where tenants don’t automatically get a hearing in their case: they must request it within 10 days of receiving the eviction notice, or the landlord can move forward with the next step of the eviction process. Tenants are encouraged to contact 211 to get legal help as early in the eviction process as possible but many fail to do so.
In 2024, over 10,000 evictions were filed in Charleston — a significant decrease from pre-pandemic numbers. Yet, only 2,523 hearings were requested. Lietzow said that fear and a lack of education are the main challenges to get more people to come to court.
Since March 2021 to May 2025, Charleston County Housing Court Program has helped 4,423 people and is constantly working on increasing participation, but that might require an overhaul of the eviction process in South Carolina as a whole.
“We have some clients who want to avoid the court system altogether. They’d rather just leave and try to find somewhere else to live,” she said.
Despite not being able to reach every tenant, the housing court program proves how one locality can change the outlook for an entire state.
To learn more about Charleston County’s housing court, contact Charleston Pro Bono Legal Services or Trident United Way’s 2-1-1.
Landlords once filed more than 17,000 evictions every year in Delaware, but in those cases only 2% of the tenants involved had access to legal help. For legal and housing advocates, this meant that the scales of justice were heavily skewed to one side and tenants needed a better chance in court.
To address this problem, in 2023, the state rolled out free representation for low-income tenants facing eviction. Variations of this program started in 2017 in New York City and today more than 20 jurisdictions have similar initiatives often dubbed “Right-to-Counsel”. But Delaware did something different: In an effort to boost the amount of help available for tenants, the state designed a first-of-its-kind program where aid was provided not only by lawyers, but trained community members as well.
Thanks to a rule change, Delaware is the first state in the country to allow non-lawyer advocates, also known as qualified tenant advocates (QTAs), to advise tenants facing eviction under lawyer supervision via the “Right to Representation” model. Under this model, lawyers and tenant advocates work in tandem, complementing each other’s work: while some cases demand complex litigation, others are better addressed out of the courtroom.
Sandy Mullet is the state’s first qualified tenant advocate. She said the majority of her work focuses on eliminating bureaucratic challenges.
“Our main job is to focus on trying to keep as many cases as we can out of court. We have a little more time to work with tenants, to do the things that attorneys don’t necessarily have time for,” she added.
Mullet had previously worked in the education sector and had no legal background, but she knew she had a knack for helping people. While she can give tenants legal advice as a trained QTA, she said she spends most of her time working on diversion. That can include working on certain cases for weeks to months on end while finding a long-term solution that can help the tenant not just avoid the eviction filing now, but in the future.
When asked if any cases depict her work as a QTA the best, she recalls a couple she worked with for weeks.
“I have an elderly couple who were both in scooters and in a small apartment, and so the walls were getting damaged by the scooters.”
The couple was facing an eviction. Fully leaning into her role, Mullet advocated not only to stop the eviction but addressing the issue at hand: the couple needed a home that accommodated their life. Thanks to Mullet’s interventions, the landlord repaired the unit and added special rails to prevent future damage and risk of displacement.
As much as many lawyers would like to help tenants beyond the courtroom, their workload and how the judicial system works forces them to move quickly, limiting ongoing help for tenants
Mullet is one of seven qualified tenant advocates and 10 lawyers behind Delaware’s program. As part of its recruitment, the initiative is open to people without a background in legal matters, as it tries to promote workforce development. Applicants receive 200 hours of training and a course led by a law professor over the span of a year.
“We can train smart, hard-working people to do good work, regardless of whether they have a formal law degree,” said Daniel Atkins, executive director of Community Legal Aid Services in Delaware, one of the legal aid offices running the program. “We can reach into communities that law schools miss, particularly communities impacted by the eviction crisis.”
Far from replacing lawyers, QTAs are allies in expanding the reach of legal aid and are a solution that focuses on giving both sides a fair chance. In Delaware, landlords have long had the option to be represented by non-lawyers or “Form 50” agents.
Yet the model has raised eyebrows for some legal aid experts. With the expansion of Right to Counsel throughout the country, guaranteeing lawyers is seen as the gold standard similar to the criminal justice system. Critics have questioned whether relying on non-lawyer is a fair option for tenants or just a cost-saving method while shying away from fully funding Right to Counsel programs. While others question how programs would address malpractice. In Delaware, non-lawyers are supervised by attorneys.
“There just are not enough lawyers interested in doing legal aid work,” Atkin said. “No one should have to navigate this process alone — it is terrifying, and confusing, and hard to decipher.”
While an in-depth analysis of Delaware’s Right to Representation and QTA model is still a work in progress, preliminary data shows it’s making an impact. A legislative report evaluating the first seven months of the program finds that the majority of the cases were litigated (36%) or resolved outside of court (38%).
To learn more about Delaware’s program, find more information here.
According to the latest Eviction Lab estimates, almost three million children face the threat of an eviction every year. For these children, an eviction is not just about housing stability. It’s a destabilizing force that impacts education, health, and their lives as a whole.
The staff of the Rochester School District in southern Minnesota saw this firsthand as the impacts of evictions were trickling down to students.
“In a given 12-month period, 32% of the eviction cases involved school-aged children. That’s an alarming statistic if you’re looking at all the ripple effects on families and kids,” said Karen Fairbairn Nath, the executive director of the Legal Assistance of Olmsted County.
Since last year, Nath’s organization has been working closely with the Rochester School District to limit the number of students displaced.
Denetria “Shai” Nicols was hired as the district’s eviction prevention specialist. In her role, she’s tasked with cross-referencing weekly eviction filings to school records to identify families facing eviction. Nicols then does everything possible to help the family access resources, whether it’s legal aid, financial assistance, or more.
In the United States, every district has a liaison tasked with limiting barriers for any student navigating homelessness, but they might lack time and resources on preventing it altogether. Her role is to avoid evictions and prevent homelessness at its root.
Although the program started last September, metrics collected so far show Nicols has been able to avoid eviction in the majority of the cases she’s identified.
Proponents of the program are excited for its potential and see it as a way to promote stability and save resources in the long term.
“Once a family has lost their home, once the family is evicted, it is so much more difficult and requires so much more time, effort, money to be able to get them housed again, that if we can just prevent it all together in the first place, we never have to go down that road,” said Lida Casper, coordinator of community partnerships with Rochester School District. “It ensures that kids get to continue to access their education, and they’re safe and stable in homes.”
To learn more about the program, contact Rochester Public Schools.
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