Brief Getting Landlords and Tenants to Talk
Subtitle
The Use of Mediation in Eviction
Brian Bieretz, Kimberly Burrowes, Emily Bramhall
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Eviction is a traumatizing and destabilizing event that can put families on a path to financial, health, and social challenges. After an eviction, families often struggle to find high-quality housing and may end up in a less safe neighborhood with fewer opportunities. Parents may lose their jobs because of the instability that evictions create and have difficulty finding a new one, further exacerbating the crisis (Desmond and Gershenson 2016). Children can be forced to move to new schools or experience other educational disruptions, which in turn can negatively affect their achievement (Clark 2016; Vásquez-Vera et al. 2017). Therefore, intervening during or before an eviction crisis occurs is key for reducing the hardships that families face, and mediation has been an important tool for empowering better outcomes. This brief explores how mediation can be used in disputes between landlords and tenants as well as provides strategies and recommendations for communities looking to expand the availability of landlord-tenant mediation.

Research Areas Social safety net Housing
Tags Poverty Housing markets Homelessness Housing affordability
Policy Centers Research to Action Lab