Replication Data for: FORCED OUT? CIVIL LEGAL ACCESS AND HOUSING STABILITY

There is considerable current interest in policy solutions to address the post-pandemic rise in evictions experienced in many communities. Some have advocated expanding access to legal counsel as one solution: in the U.S., tenants usually face eviction on their own, while landlords are typically represented by an attorney. Although it seems intuitive that legal representation in housing court would help tenants facing eviction, measuring the effects of counsel is quite challenging, because represented and unrepresented tenants are dissimilar across many dimensions, including wealth. A handful of randomized experiments suggest lawyers have appreciable impacts in housing court, but results are mixed, and these studies’ generalizability to the larger universe of civil legal housing assistance programs remains uncertain. In this Essay, we address that gap through a quasi-experimental evaluation of the Legal Services Corporation (LSC), the nation’s largest civil legal aid provider that serves over 1.7 million people each year. We employ Census data covering millions of households and exploit an eligibility rule that limits LSC services to households earning less than 125 percent of the federal poverty level. Using several methodological approaches, including regression-discontinuity, differences-in-differences, and a dose-response analysis, we demonstrate that access to civil legal aid improves housing stability. Our estimates suggest that LSC enables 75,000 households to maintain their housing each year at a rough cost of around $2,000 per prevented move. These impacts are on par with those observed in high-quality randomized trials, suggesting that civil legal aid, unlike many other interventions, does not lose efficacy with scale. Our large sample sizes allow us to measure how impacts of civil legal access vary for particular population subgroups, something not possible in prior work. Access to civil legal aid is particularly beneficial for seniors aged 65+, people with less than a high school degree, Asians, and people who do not speak English well. Our findings highlight the important role that funding legal aid can play in curbing housing instability and homelessness. Though eviction defense models vary, what matters the most is having an attorney.

当前，针对诸多社区在后疫情时期出现的住房驱逐率攀升问题，探索政策解决方案的相关研究广受关注。有观点主张扩大法律援助覆盖范围作为应对方案之一：在美国，租户在面临住房驱逐程序时通常无律师代理，而房东往往有专职律师出庭辩护。尽管从直觉上看，在房产法庭中获得法律代理能帮助面临驱逐的租户，但衡量法律援助的实际效果却颇具挑战——因为获得代理与未获得代理的租户在诸多维度（包括财富水平）上均存在显著差异。已有少量随机实验表明，律师在房产法庭中能产生可观影响，但相关研究结果并不一致，且这些研究能否推广至更广泛的民事住房法律援助项目群体仍不明确。在本研究论述中，我们通过对美国公益法律服务公司（Legal Services Corporation, LSC）开展准实验评估，填补了这一研究空白。该机构是全美规模最大的民事法律援助提供商，每年服务超170万民众。我们使用覆盖数百万户家庭的人口普查数据，并利用一项资格限制规则展开研究：该规则将LSC的服务限定于收入低于联邦贫困线125%的家庭。通过采用回归断点法（regression-discontinuity）、双重差分法（differences-in-differences）以及剂量反应分析（dose-response analysis）等多种研究方法，我们证实获取民事法律援助可有效提升住房稳定性。我们的估算结果显示，LSC每年可帮助7.5万户家庭保住住房，每避免一次搬迁的成本约为2000美元。此类影响效果与高质量随机试验中观测到的结果相当，这表明与诸多其他干预措施不同，民事法律援助不会随着服务规模扩大而降低效用。得益于庞大的样本量，我们得以测算民事法律援助对特定人口亚群体的影响差异，这是此前研究无法实现的。民事法律援助对65岁以上老年人、未完成高中学业者、亚裔群体以及英语能力较差者尤为有益。我们的研究结果凸显了资助法律援助在遏制住房不稳定与无家可归问题上的重要作用。尽管驱逐辩护的实施模式各有不同，但最为关键的因素在于是否拥有代理律师。