Longer trips to court cause evictions

Area of Science:

• Urban Studies
• Law and Social Science
• Public Policy

Background:

• Nearly 40% of tenants facing eviction in Philadelphia defaulted on their cases between 2005 and 2021.
• Default judgments occur when tenants fail to appear in court to contest eviction filings.
• Tenant appearance in court is crucial for asserting legal rights and preventing unwarranted evictions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the impact of transit accessibility to courthouses on tenant default rates in eviction cases.
• To quantify the relationship between travel time and the likelihood of a tenant defaulting.
• To explore potential solutions for reducing default judgments by improving physical access to justice.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of approximately 200,000 eviction filings in Philadelphia from 2005 to 2021.
• Statistical modeling to control for tenant-level and landlord-level confounding factors.
• Replication of findings using a separate dataset of over 800,000 evictions from Harris County, Texas.

Main Results:

• Increased transit travel time to the courthouse significantly correlates with higher tenant default probabilities.
• A one-hour increase in travel time raises the default probability by 3.8% to 8.6%.
• This effect was not observed in public housing evictions or during the COVID-19 pandemic (due to virtual appearances).

Conclusions:

• Physical courthouse accessibility, specifically transit time, is a significant determinant of access to justice.
• Reducing travel barriers could prevent substantial numbers of default evictions.
• Expanding virtual court options may mitigate physical access barriers and promote equitable outcomes.