How Philadelphia Kept Thousands of Tenants From Being Evicted

In early February, a piece of paper slipped through the mail slot in Ivy Handy’s door. She owed her landlord $2,184.75, it said, and if she didn’t pay, she would have to leave.

“It broke me,” Ms. Handy said. She knew what it could mean. When she was 19, she and her siblings were forced out of their home and into a homeless shelter for nine months. The thought of going through that again at age 53 filled her with dread.

Eviction notices are being served to a rising number of people in the United States now that moratoriums, which protected renters like Ms. Handy early in the pandemic, have ended and billions of federal dollars for rental assistance have stopped flowing.

But Philadelphia, where Ms. Handy lives, has kept in place one key lockdown-era protection program — at least for the moment. Under this program, if a tenant owes less than $3,000 in back rent, landlords must try mediation in good faith before eviction. If after 30 days the two sides cannot come to an agreement or a tenant has not shown up to mediation, the landlord can go to court to enforce the eviction. The result seems to be a boon for both parties: Tenants stay in their homes, while landlords are paid.

“It’s one of the best-designed diversion programs in the country,” said Carl Gershenson of The Eviction Lab at Princeton University. In other cities, eviction filings are reaching or exceeding prepandemic averages, according to his organization. Even places that have adopted other eviction interventions have recently topped those averages. But Philadelphia, which is America’s poorest big city, has consistently seen fewer than the 20,000 filings it typically had in the years leading up to the pandemic.

Poor tenants tend to spend most of their income on rent, so a medical bill, job loss or unexpected car repairs can lead to a missed payment. An eviction record can scare off would-be landlords, so people are often forced to find temporary shelter and can even end up homeless. Philadelphia’s program does not lower medical costs, raise wages or lower the high cost of housing. But the diversion does offer those who have the possibility of making good on back rent a chance to stay in their homes. By slowing down the process and setting up a negotiation mechanism, it has kept more than 4,000 renters housed since late 2020 and been praised by the White House as a model for other cities.

The program’s early success, experts said, was helped immensely by the billions of dollars in federal rental assistance money, which Philadelphia used to pay arrears. Though landlords complained that the payouts did not always go smoothly, the possibility of recouping back rent made mandatory diversion more palatable. When the federal money ran out in January, the city offered up $30 million to help keep the program going through June 2024.

Ms. Handy did not know any of this. She only knew what life had taught her: An eviction meant a hard road ahead.

After leaving the shelter at 19, she worked for years as an apprentice plumber and then as a food packer. Injuries from those jobs — slipped disks, arthritis and fingers that lock up — as well as mental health issues put her on disability. She enjoyed stable housing with a housing voucher until early 2017, when she was forced out of a home she had lived in for about a decade. She counted herself lucky when, after months of trying, a landlord took her voucher and even dispensed with the $1,300 security deposit — a small grace.

Ms. Handy filled the place with the furniture she could afford on her monthly $941 disability check. The rest she scavenged, along with decorations she plucked from the trash and spray-painted silver: a flamingo figurine, an elephant, some stars. The house became a refuge for her daughter and granddaughter.

Last year, a big company bought the house from the sympathetic landlord. Then, only a few months later, Ms. Handy was surprised by the eviction notice. After a string of frustrating phone calls, she said, the company told her she owed money in part because she had not paid that initial security deposit. (Neither her landlord nor a lawyer for the company responded to multiple calls and emails.)

It was all so scary. But the eviction notice listed a number for the diversion program. She steeled herself and called.

Foreclosures to Evictions

Philadelphia’s eviction diversion was built on efforts to address a different housing crisis: the 2008 financial collapse and the wave of foreclosures that followed. At the time, 60 percent of the city’s residents were homeowners, many with few resources to fall back on. Judge Annette M. Rizzo wanted to give them a fighting chance. Armed with a court order, she forced mortgage lenders into her courtroom to try to resolve their issues. “It’s all about the face-to-face,” Judge Rizzo said. “We provided a theater for this important conversation.”

That program successfully prevented more than 8,700 foreclosures in seven years. But it could not stop them all, and, as people lost their homes, more became struggling renters. The network of people who worked on foreclosures started to develop more support for tenants, collecting their personal stories to bring to city council meetings and reaching out to landlords. By the time the pandemic arrived, those efforts had made it possible for the city to quickly set up an eviction diversion program modeled on negotiation.

For Ms. Handy, the result was that, within weeks of placing that phone call, she was in a meeting with a housing counselor, a lawyer for her landlord and a mediator, one of approximately 65 volunteers who run about 50 such calls every week.

The mediations were conducted on the phone, and Ms. Handy participated while sitting on her dark gray couch as her two cats lurked about. When her landlord’s lawyer said she owed more than $2,000, she balked. Her counselor asked to pause the mediation so she could confer privately with Ms. Handy.

“How much do you actually owe?” her counselor asked her.

“I owe $1,200, and I just paid $900,” Ms. Handy said. “I’m living off $41.”

This type of conversation — for Ms. Handy, a chance to dispute her landlord’s assertions before going to court — is unique among the eviction intervention efforts that ramped up in recent years. The programs vary from place to place. Some, like one in Maryland, kick in only once the court is involved. Some, like one in Texas, offer money. Washington State offers legal representation. And others make mediation voluntary for landlords.

Mandatory participation was included in Philadelphia’s plan after a pilot program in 2019 struggled to recruit even 12 landlords, said Rachel Garland, a managing attorney at Community Legal Services, which helped set up and run the program. “It needed to be required,” she said.

Many landlords are frustrated by the mandate, which they say creates roadblocks that just kick an inevitable eviction down the road.

Brad Toll tried to evict a tenant who owed $17,000 and did not seem able or even willing to pay. Mediation did not go anywhere, he said, and the 30 days it required just added time onto what turned into a yearlong court fight, during which the tenant damaged the building and frightened other tenants. The whole ordeal ended up costing about $25,000, Mr. Toll said.

“How many of those people can I have before I go bankrupt?” he said.

There have been some changes to the process. Last February, cases with large debts like the one Mr. Toll described started to be sent down another track called “direct negotiation.” There is still a 30-day pause before the court process begins, and tenants are connected with resources, but there is no requirement to meet with a mediator.

Another landlord, Tsilina Aybin, echoed Mr. Toll’s criticisms, but praised the program for providing a door to fruitful conversations. A couple renting from her had fallen behind on rent while caring for their newborn. “They were super grateful,” Ms. Aybin said. And so was Ms. Aybin. She was glad to not have to drag the tenants to court and to work things out amicably. Mediation had put them all together.

A Big Day

Mediation resolves many of the easiest evictions; the hardest ones still end up in a sixth-floor courtroom with low ceilings, gray carpet and drab lights. Conflicts could include an intra-family squabble or a landlord on a fixed income trying to evict a tenant with similar means. Last year, more than 3,800 Philadelphians lost their eviction cases in landlord-tenant court.

Fates are decided as soon as the clerk calls the roll about 9 a.m. If tenants are not in one of the court’s worn wooden seats when their names are called, they lose their case by default.

Tenants who show up can consult with a lawyer who stands in the back of the courtroom, one of a growing number that the city now provides without cost.

But these efforts are not guaranteed to continue. The $30 million for rental assistance will eventually run out, and it is unclear whether the city will be willing to put more money in the fund should the economy tumble. The mandate for landlord participation in diversion expires next summer. Rachel Garland is hopeful that the process has become normalized enough that “this will continue to be part of the landlord-tenant landscape in Philadelphia.”

For Ms. Handy, the uncertainty of the eviction process was overwhelming. She was not eating, partly because stress had stolen her appetite, but also because she did not have much money left after paying some of her debt.

In the second mediation session, she offered to pay an extra $150 a month. The landlord’s lawyer was noncommittal. She still did not know if she would end up standing before a judge.

Then one day her phone chirped.

“You have completed participation in the program,” a text read.

It was done. The landlord had agreed to the repayment terms she had offered. “I could really live again and be happy,” she said.

The Headway initiative is funded through grants from the Ford Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), with Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors serving as a fiscal sponsor. The Woodcock Foundation is a funder of Headway’s public square. Funders have no control over the selection, focus of stories or the editing process and do not review stories before publication. The Times retains full editorial control of the Headway initiative.