Bright Spot: Chicago, IL | Eviction Prevention

Partner with non-traditional or non-housing partners (e.g. food pantries, law enforcement, faith-based organizations) to engage clients in conversation about housing and connect them to the coordinated entry system.

Check out this bright spot if…

• Community housing programs want to increase their housing retention rate.
  
• You want to try it!

Summary

Deborah’s Place, an organization in Chicago, Illinois, that operates and offers Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) among other services, has a mission to empower women to take back and maintain control over their lives. When the organization discovered that its housing program resulted in a 10% rate of eviction per year, Deborah’s Place determined that evicting tenants back into homelessness defeated their mission. The organization’s operations were actually getting in the way of ending homelessness.

While there would still be times when eviction was necessary, staff members at Deborah’s Place aimed to limit those instances to only the most extreme cases. To achieve this aim, staff developed a standardized internal eviction prevention program to guide clients through the process before resorting to the legal eviction process. Once implemented, the organization experienced an immediate decline in eviction rates, from approximately 10% to 1% within the first year.

Key Action: Create an internal eviction prevention process

The first step in creating the process was to educate the organization’s executive leadership and Board of Directors, helping them understand why a change was needed. Leadership needed to understand what an eviction prevention program was, how it applied to permanent supportive housing programs, and the benefits of eviction prevention to the organization.

Once leadership was on board, Deborah’s Place staff created an Eviction Prevention Committee comprising both staff members and tenants to develop an eviction prevention process. Understanding that if everyone involved was not on the same page in implementing a standardized process, it would not be successful, the committee set to work writing a clear policy. Additionally, the committee formed a Tenant Advocacy group to support and represent tenants who were not facing eviction. Instead of immediately evicting clients with lease violations, the committee structured the following process:

1. When a lease violation occurs, a property manager fills out a standard eviction form. The form is then sent to the tenant, the tenant’s case manager, the Tenant Advocacy group, and the COO of Deborah’s Place.
2. The tenant may select a Tenant Advocate to assist them in representing their case to the Eviction Prevention Committee.
3. The tenant and advocate present the case to the Eviction Prevention Committee and await the committee’s feedback.
   • Should the committee proceed with an eviction recommendation, it must provide written justification for its support of the recommendation.
4. The committee’s recommendation is brought to the Supportive Housing Program Manager and the COO of Deborah’s Place for final decision.
   • Should the Supportive Housing Program Manager and COO determine that an eviction is necessary, they must initiate a formal eviction process that adheres to all applicable state and local laws.

Key Action: Implement the eviction prevention process

Before implementing the process, the organization moved to evict tenants as soon as lease violations warranted it. Changing the culture of how staff thought about evictions was therefore key to ensuring the new process was successful.

Deborah’s Place recommends implementing an Eviction Prevention Program that relies on time and effective communication. The staff allowed time for both staff and tenants to work together to form a process that both could live with, and ensured that the new policy was communicated clearly to staff and tenants alike on multiple occasions. To ensure the new process was implemented consistently,

Property Management ran monthly reports to check the rent delinquency status of all tenants and to share that information with case management teams. In addition, the reports were reviewed monthly in in-person meetings between property management and case management staff.

Of a 129-unit building, Deborah’s Place had about a 10% eviction rate per year before implementing the Eviction Prevention Program. Since the program’s implementation, eviction rates have remained around 1% per year, consistently maintaining this rate year after year.

Fail forward moments

• This process was designed for single-site projects. It may require some adjustments to adapt it to scattered-site projects.
• Sometimes, preventing a client’s eviction meant putting the client on a corrective action plan. This required Deborah’s Place to develop a process by which a tenant could receive extra support for a limited period.

Want more information?

Check out a video on Deborah’s Place Eviction Prevention Program