In order to prevent evictions during the pandemic, in collaboration with the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and the Atlanta Regional Commission, we produced an evictions tracking database in summer of 2020. We track evictions in Macon, GA, Atlanta GA, and Savannah, GA. Where possible, each evictions case is geocoded at the address level, and cases outcomes are categorized.

The database was designed to be high-frequency, address-level, and to provide granular information on case outcomes so that it could be used during the pandemic to serve data needs of legal aid, tenant organizer, and emergency landlord and tenant rental assistance providers in Georgia. Access to tract level and anonymized case level data APIs are freely available; raw data is available upon request.

The production of this data tool is housed and supported by the Center for Spatial Planning Analytics and Visualization and funded in part by the Russell Sage Foundation.

A multitude of community engaged projects have emerged from this data tool:

Tenant Organizing

During the summer of 2020, the Data Collective worked with Housing Justice League (HJL) to support canvassing efforts to provide tenants with resources. We estimated a 8% increase in answer rates following canvassing efforts. In Fall of 2020, MCRP students met with, and worked with HJL organizers to collaboratively designed an evictions data tool which could identify landlords with high eviction rates. You can read more about their work here and here.

A PhD student in Human Centered Computing continued the collaborative design process in spring and summer of 2021, and created a data tool for HJL to identify key sites for delivering tenant aid and organizing.

Most recently, a team of Interactive Computing and MCRP students used the evictions data tool to identify landlords with the highest eviction rates in Atlanta, and created dossiers on each firm. You can read a write-up of that work here.

Direct Tenant Outreach

Students at Georgia Tech’s School of City and Regional Planning, Spelman’s Social Justice Fellows, and Brown University collaborated to send postcards each week to tenants facing eviction in Clayton County. These postcards directed tenants to websites with information about the CDC moratorium, rental assistance, and other services. This data tool also provided tenants with contact information to local legal aid groups who used text-banking and postcard outreach to contact renters facing displacement during the pandemic.

Landlord Outreach

We provided lists of landlords filing for eviction to community partners like Buckhead Christian Ministry, who sought to pro-actively outreach to landlords with declining rental rolls to deliver rental assistance to landlords, and help tenants facing eviction in the midst of a pandemic stay in place.

Policy Support

• GA Tech students worked to provide lists of landlords filing for eviction to Atlanta Legal Aid Society to help identify landlords filing for eviction in violation of the CARES Act.
• Led by the Atlanta Regional Commission, we helped support and design an evictions data tracking tool for the Atlanta region.
• Responding to the slow dispersion of Emergency Rental Assistance in Georgia, MCRP students analyzed evictions data, and created policy recommendations for the Department of Community Affairs to use proxy qualification by qualified census tract to distribute Emergency Rental Assistance effectively. You can read more about that work here.

Resources:

• Evictions data portal: http://evictions.design.gatech.edu/
• Atlanta Regional Commission DataViz

Related Publications:

Raymond, EL; Stein, S; Haley, V.; Woodworth, E; Zhang, G.; Sivakumar, R; Guhathakurta, S. Southeastern Evictions Data Collective Database: Version 1.0. School of City and Regional Planning: Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020, http://evictions.design.gatech.edu/.

Stein, S., Haley, V., Raymond, E. Woodworth, E., Dill, J. (2021). Special Briefing: Despite CDC Moratorium, Atlanta-Area Eviction Filings hit low income, minority neighborhoods. Policy Briefs. Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s Center for Housing and Policy and Community and Economic Development.

Raymond, E., Immergluck, D., Sudeall, L., Alexander, F. S., Rich, M., Pasciuti, D. Dantzler, P., & Hyde, A. (2020). Towards an Emergency Housing Response to COVID-19 in Georgia.