New Article: Allison Freedman, Eviction Sealing: A Lifeline in the Fight for Housing Justice, forthcoming UC L. J. Abstract below:
In January 2023, the White House released a Blueprint for a Renters Bill of Rights. The Blueprint called for immediate sealing of eviction case filings to reduce the likelihood that tenants would be locked out of future housing opportunities without the chance to defend themselves. Shortly thereafter, the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a request for public comment on how the use of eviction records and screening algorithms may affect tenant housing opportunities and drive discriminatory outcomes. The eviction crisis, its discriminatory effects, and the idea that sealing eviction records may provide a solution to these issues have thus risen to the top of the national agenda. Yet why eviction sealing is an optimal solution to disrupt the eviction system and the forces currently driving it, and how eviction sealing can best function in practice have not been sufficiently explored.
To respond to this absence of scholarship, this Article looks at evictions from three unique perspectives, which I call the Eviction Institution, the Eviction Market, and the Eviction Caste System. Through these perspectives, the Article traces the origins of the eviction crisis and the systems perpetuating it, the resulting stratified housing market and involuntary sorting of human beings, as well as the ways evictions strip individuals of basic human rights while acting as a policing and surveillance system.
With this context in mind, this Article outlines a framework for a Model Eviction Sealing Act. This framework is based on a first-of-its kind survey of all current state eviction sealing legislation, as well as discussions with legislators, advocates, and practitioners about the successes and challenges relating to current statutes. The Model Eviction Sealing Act can be enlisted to help solve the problems stemming from what this Article calls the Eviction Institution and its discriminatory housing outcomes. It is only through a deep understanding of the history and present context in which evictions occur that states are likely to enact the Model Eviction Sealing Act. The Article therefore provides this background in connection with a framework for eviction sealing legislation to encourage real progress on a longstanding issue that impacts millions of Americans and is currently in the national spotlight.
Poverty Law 