Downward spiral

For families, an eviction can trigger a downward spiral.

Already struggling financially, evicted tenants followed by Sun reporters faced new expenses: money for hotel rooms, or storage units to hold their furniture and belongings. And once they found new places to rent, they needed money for a security deposit and moving expenses.

Many families end up in a worse home or neighborhood than they left, because fewer landlords will rent to tenants with evictions on their records.

Parents lose transportation and jobs. Children who transfer from school to school miss out on education, relationships with friends, and familiarity. All may suffer stress and depression. Harvard University sociologist Matthew Desmond documented the impacts in “Evicted,” his 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning book on the struggles of eight families in Milwaukee.

“We have to conclude that evictions — which used to be rare in cities like Baltimore, which used to draw crowds — are not just a condition of poverty,” Desmond told participants in a recent University of Baltimore seminar. Rather, he said, they are “a cause of it.”

“Eviction causes loss. Families lose not only their homes but often their schools, their neighborhoods and their possessions. ... If we want more family stability, more community stability, we need fewer evictions.”

Students in Baltimore change schools at rates far higher than anywhere else in Maryland.

The city district recorded some 12,750 transfers or withdrawals in the last school year. Nearly half involved movement from one city school to another.

While there is little data to tie that movement to evictions, advocates for tenants and for students agree that evictions are a significant factor. The result: lower scores for students and their schools.

A University of Chicago researcher has found that the more children move, the further students fall behind academically.

Students who changed schools four or more times by sixth grade, for example, were about a year behind classmates who had more stability in their education, researcher David Kerbow said.

Research by Desmond shows that workers who are evicted are between 11 percent to 22 percent more likely to be laid off. The eviction process can take weeks, and involve multiple court hearings, forcing low-income workers to take time off that puts their jobs more at risk than those of higher-paid employees, who are more likely to be able to use paid sick leave.

The stress of fighting an eviction, finding a new house and moving can also hurt job performance, Desmond wrote in the journal Social Problems. Forced moves increase tardiness and absenteeism.

Evicted tenants tend to relocate to “poorer and higher-crime neighborhoods,” and accept substandard housing — with potentially long-lasting effects.

“Residential instability often brings about other forms of instability in families, schools, and communities that compromise the life chances of adults and children,” he wrote.

That’s especially true for mothers, who are more likely to suffer depression and to report worse health for themselves and their children. Even two years after an eviction, mothers reported higher rates of depression and “material hardship” than peers who were not evicted.

Benjamin Frederick III, a longtime property owner, manager and Realtor in the city, said evictions are never desirable, but some small number is to be expected.

Baltimore saw 7,500 evictions last year from the city’s 128,000 rental properties, a rate of nearly 6 percent.

“That’s not bad,” Frederick said. “You’re always going to have people who don’t pay the rent.”

The eviction rates in New York and Washington were about 1 percent.

Corey Brown, owner of C. Brown Property Management, is one of several landlords who spoke of “professional tenants,” who they say abuse the court and city regulatory systems by filing bogus complaints, or report problems by calling the city’s 311 line instead of contacting their landlords.

The Sun’s analysis of 5,511 complaints filed in court by tenants from 2010 through November 2016 did not find a significant number of repeat players. Advocates for tenants say few are even aware of the complaint process, which is supposed to give them an avenue for justice against landlords who do not provide livable