Renter Nonpayment and Landlord Response: Evidence From COVID-19

How renters respond to economic hardship, and how landlords respond when tenants fail to make rent, are understudied questions, owing largely to limited data. We use experiences from the COVID-19 pandemic to begin answering these questions. Drawing on both new census data and two original surveys of renters in Los Angeles County, we test nine hypotheses about the sources of renter distress and landlord reactions to it. We find that lost work and lost income are the primary drivers of missed or late payments. Most tenants who fell behind entered into repayment plans with their landlords. Eviction threats were uncommon but increased as the pandemic persisted. Landlords were more likely to threaten eviction as tenants fell further behind, and smaller landlords were more likely than larger ones to cut tenant services and threaten or initiate evictions. Our evidence suggests that government income support helped tenants pay rent and thus helped stave off eviction threats. We also find that tenants took on other forms of debt, such as credit cards, loans from family, etc., to make rent. These debt burdens generally will not be relieved by housing assistance, and so require other policy responses.