A partnership between the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) and Temple University’s Center for Public Health Law Research has launched an Eviction Laws Database, exposing the varied housing protections offered nationwide.
This new research finds that only California, Washington, D.C., New Hampshire, New Jersey and Oregon enforce “just cause” statutes that require landlords to provide reasoning for evicting a tenant. Only six states require that eviction summonses include information on how tenants can access legal aid services.
Laws on what counts as an unlawful evictions also vary drastically. For example, over half of all U.S. states do not make eviction based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or immigration status unlawful.
“Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an eviction crisis in the United States, with estimates suggesting landlords across the country filed 3.7 million eviction cases each year — leaving considerable impacts on health and well-being in their wake,” said Katie Moran-McCabe, JD, Special Projects Manager at the Center for Public Health Law Research.
“These datasets open the doors for research to better understand the role eviction laws may play.”
