Homelessness Prevention through Eviction Diversion: an RCT

The intervention to be studied was developed as a result of increased requests for help with what requestors thought was a formal eviction when in fact a formal eviction had not yet begun but rather a landlord was not making needed repairs to the housing unit. What form of eviction diversion is most useful to clients? In an effort to answer that question, Legal Services of Greater Miami (“LSM”), the field partner, developed an eviction diversion clinic, designed to provide brief legal advice to individuals who request legal assistance when only an informal eviction scenario exists with a goal of avoiding a formal eviction altogether. The tenant demand for legal guidance outweighs the capacity for the program. The clinic currently operates on a “first come, first served” basis, with those who are unable to obtain legal advice receiving a brochure that intends to outline next steps in common informal eviction scenarios.

2020-01-01

2022-01-01

Our primary outcome will be whether the clinic avoided a formal eviction and then, if, as a result of the avoidance of that eviction, housing stability improves.

Because of its overall focus on housing stability, our study will thus contribute evidence on the following, more specific question: if a Legal Services Provider (“LSP”) is successful at diverting people from eviction, will that have the effect of diverting people from continued housing instability, reducing the likelihood of homelessness, and reducing instances of poverty?

Enrollment in the study will occur for 2 years. The study population are low-income individuals or families at risk for eviction. To be enrolled in the study, LSM will perform its normal screening and intake process for people requesting legal assistance that do not have a formal eviction matter pending but assert that the conditions in their dwelling unit are in need of improvement and the landlord has not made improvements despite notification of the need (those that LSM typically diverts to the clinic). Eligibility includes a screening for low-income clients. LSM serves clients at or under 200% of the federal poverty level, for the most part. For those potential study participants eligible for participation in the study, intake professionals at LSM will conduct the informed consent process, informing potential study participants of the study, the voluntary nature of the study, and the randomization scheme. Those individuals that provide consent to participate will be assigned to treatment or control by random assignment. Those assigned to control will be provided the brochure. Those assigned to treatment will be provided with the brochure and provided with the date to appear for the clinic. Those individuals that do not provide consent to participate in the study will be provided with the brochure but will not have the opportunity to participate in the clinic. If an individual does not avoid a formal eviction, they can return to LSM to request full-scope legal representation in that formal eviction matter if they choose. LSM will inform the research team if this happens so A2J Lab can account for this intervention in any results.

To be eligible to participate, all study participants will be required to consent to have housing data collected for two years prior to enrollment into the study and for 2 years upon entry into the study and to participate in surveys administered electronically by A2J Lab. All study participants will be informed that A2J Lab will review the publicly available court data that pertains to any housing court matter they underwent two years prior to entry into the study and that they may undergo two years beyond entry into the study. Study participants will take a baseline survey on site to serve as instruction in using the survey tool and to collect an initial round of survey data on housing. The survey tool has the capacity to manage surveys in all languages involved in the study; LSM will complete the survey translations. The A2J Lab will ensure that follow-up calls all occur in the correct languages.

The process to enroll participants into the study shall proceed as follows:

1. Potential clients reach out to LSM requesting services. Those that are eligible for the clinic are those describing a situation in which their landlord will not make needed repairs. As it relates to housing matters, LSM is only able to consider full representation to people that have a pending eviction matter, meaning an eviction has been filed in court against the potential client. Clients can reach out to LSM in-person, by phone, or online.

2. If the potential client contacts LSM in-person, a short pre-screen for subject-matter eligibility is performed by the receptionist. For those that are eligible for the clinic, this includes ensuring the subject-matter for which the potential client accesses LSM is a problem with a landlord making needed repairs. If the potential client is eligible, the receptionist puts them in a queue to see an intake paralegal that day.

3. If the potential client contacts LSM by phone or contacts LSM in-person and is put in the queue mentioned in step 2 above, an intake paralegal conducts typical intake and eligibility screening by phone or in-person, as the case may be. This takes 20-30 minutes. If the potential client contacts LSM online, typical intake and eligibility screening questions are asked online and confirmed by the intake paralegal within 2 days by phone. This takes about 10 minutes. This includes gathering demographic information from the potential client, citizenship status, and ensuring they are at or below 200% of the federal poverty guidelines. It also includes a conflict check to ensure LSM has no conflict of interest with this client. Immigration status is collected because LSM is funded by the Legal Services Corporation, an entity compelled by the federal government to fund legal services agencies that provide services only to people with certain immigration statuses.

4. Potential LSM clients then become potential study participants. Potential study participants will be provided information about the potential to participate in the study, the voluntary nature of the study, and what information will be collected about them.

a. Potential study participants will be informed that A2J Lab will review their publically available court record data related to housing matters and criminal justice involvement for two years prior to entry into the study and up to 2 years beyond their enrollment.

b. Potential study participants will be asked to provide their mobile phone number, email address, and contact information for two alternate contacts at this time.

c. Potential study participants will be informed that this information will be used to administer surveys every six weeks for up to 2 years beyond their enrollment asking questions about housing. Each survey is expected to take no more than 10 minutes.

d. Potential study participants will be asked to authorize A2J Lab to access their housing related data from the Florida Homeless Management Information System (“HMIS”) and the public utilities companies serving the area for two years prior to entry into the study and up to 2 years beyond enrollment in the study.

e. At this time, potential study participants will be asked to provide verbal consent to participate.

5. Potential study participants that provide verbal consent will then be provided with a written version of the information and asked to read and sign it to indicate their informed consent. Potential study participants that do not consent to participate in the study will receive a brochure but will not be entered into the lottery for the scarce clinic spots. Data for those that do not consent will not be transmitted to A2J Lab.

6. If intake is done over the phone, either because the potential study participant contacted LSM by phone or because potential study participant contacted LSM online and the intake paralegal is performing the follow-up call, LSM will email or mail the consent form to the potential study participant to sign and send back by email or mail. LSM will note the date of mailing or emailing the forms for A2J Lab. A2J Lab will follow-up with potential study participant by phone every three weeks from the date of mailing or emailing for a period of 12 weeks to check on status of consent forms. If potential study participant does not transmit signed consent forms to LSM at the end of the 12 weeks, A2J Lab will discontinue follow-up.

7. Information gained at intake and the consent forms will be transmitted to the A2J Lab using the Harvard Law School SFTP.

8. A2J Lab will randomly assign study participants to either attend the clinic and receive the brochure or to just receive the brochure.

9. Those study participants who will attend the clinic and receive the brochure will be provided the brochure by email or regular mail at that time and scheduled to attend the next clinic. Those who will just receive the brochure are provided the brochure at that time by email or regular mail.

10. All study participants will take a baseline survey. LSM intake staff will instruct study participants regarding how to take the survey.

11. Those study participants attending the clinic will receive a phone call reminder from LSM three days prior to their scheduled attendance at the clinic. They will also receive a text reminder from A2J Lab 1 day prior to their scheduled attendance at the clinic.

12. Potential clients provide a conditional retainer for the services of LSM on the day of the clinic. Potential clients must sign and return this document to the intake professional. This is standard process for LSM to provide service to any potential client for any subject-matter area.

13. After enrollment, A2J Lab will contact study participants by phone to provide them with a contact number for A2J Lab if they have questions.

14. After enrollment, A2J Lab will contact the two alternate contacts provided to ensure they are willing to be alternate contacts and to inform them of the responsibilities of that role which include A2J Lab will call alternate contacts when the study participant has not completed a survey and A2J Lab is not able to reach study participant. At that time, A2J Lab will ask alternate contact for new contact information for study participant and A2J Lab will update its records with that information.

As with all studies that include a legal services provider as the field partner, selection bias is present when study participants enrolled are those that made the effort to reach out to the legal services provider on their own. We are capturing only those participants with the ability to make that contact. A2J Lab could reduce this selection bias by doing outreach in the community to advertise the availability of the services of LSM and the opportunity to participate in a study. This may result in a higher enrollment in the study which would result in more people receiving the brochure with the number of clinic spots remaining constant. This would still require an individual to have some level of agency to reach out to LSM but can serve to validate suspicions that inhabitable conditions may exist in one’s rental property.

Randomization done in office by a computer

individual

No

0

616 enrolled individuals

184 enrolled individuals in treatment.
432 enrolled individuals in control.

The study as proposed utilizes a minimum detectable effect size of a roughly 12% reduction in evictions (at a current baseline rate of 50%, as estimated by the LSP). In practical terms, this effect size would result in at least 11 fewer evictions per year for clients of the LSP. Determining what an appropriate effect size would be is often less of a question of pure statistics than one of values and subject matter expertise. From a statistics standpoint, higher sample sizes and smaller MDEs are always a useful goal, however, aiming for smaller effect sizes often comes with practical costs. Enrolling individuals in a treatment group often entails some type of expenditure of resources, which should be balanced against the potential benefits of a treatment when the actual impacts of a policy are unknown. However, another important cost to consider in this instance is the increased time involved in evaluating the impact of the treatment. The rate at which subjects could enroll in the study is beyond the control of either the evaluators (the A2J Lab) or the LSP (Miami Legal Services). This means that to detect smaller effect sizes, we must wait for more individuals to enroll in the study, which may increase the financial needs to conduct the study. While we do not know if the treatment provides a benefit, thus the reason for conducting the study, determining an appropriate MDE relies on balancing the cost of missing an effect between a proposed MDE and a theoretical smaller MDE and the cost of increasing the length of the study, which may imposes funding burdens. The power calculations illustrate 5 different study lengths and the power levels and MDEs associated with them. Using the baseline data we have, that for evictions, detecting an MDE of roughly 12% would require a study lasting two years. This MDE could be lowered to 10%, which would practically mean 9 fewer evictions per year. However, having enough power to detect the additional 2 fewer evictions per year would require an additional year be added to the length of the study. Reducing the MDE even farther, to 8.5%, would mean a difference in detecting an additional 3.25 evictions per year compared to an MDE of 12%, but it would require an additional two years be added to the length of the study. These calculations reflect a situation with a hypothetical baseline rate of 50%. As the baseline effect moves away from 50%, effect sizes become easier to detect, so this situation represents the most extreme difference between different study designs. At these levels, the additional power provided to the study do not justify the increase in time required to obtain them. Instead, a 12% MDE balances the needs to detect a meaningful treatment effect, 11 fewer evictions per year, against a reasonable timeline for the study. It is for that reason that the A2J lab believes that a two-year randomization period is an appropriate length for the study design.