Inconsistencies in access to state courts' eviction case records and a lack of standardization in that data are frustrating researchers at Legal Services Corp. and elsewhere trying to analyze national eviction trends. But some jurisdictions are working hard to make sure these records are available.

An LSC interim report issued last week outlines how a lack of access to eviction case information in some states and inconsistencies and inaccuracies in others have presented difficulties for researchers working on a wide-ranging study of the eviction situation in the U.S.

"It echoes what we're finding with the eviction study writ large, which is depending on where you live, eviction is different," said Lynn Jennings, LSC's vice president for grants management.

LSC's congressionally mandated study, "The Effect of State & Local Laws on Evictions," focuses on the variability of state and local eviction laws in an effort to help legal aid providers make more informed decisions about resource allocation and outreach, last week's report said.

But LSC is relying on state and local court data to conduct that study, and that data can be wildly inconsistent from state to state or even county to county, it said. In some places, it's not available at all.

"If you can get it and it's free, collecting it is the easy part," Jennings said. "It's cleaning the data, verifying the data and validating the data that's really labor-intensive."

Inconsistencies in Access

One of the biggest challenges for researchers working on LSC's eviction study is simply gaining access to eviction case data in some states, the report said. Only 25 states and territories offer a consolidated, free, public website for searching civil case records from courts that hear eviction cases.


Those websites speed research and analysis by providing eviction records in a standard format with uniform terminology across jurisdictions, the report said. That makes it easier for researchers at LSC and elsewhere to compare data from different counties and place local eviction patterns in the context of larger trends.

"This is something that is very important to policymakers right now as they see how much of the emergency rental assistance money is going out to the various localities, through the states and to local organizations," Jennings said. "Is that making a difference?"

But 21 states and territories don't maintain a website with those records, according to LSC. Some of that data is available at the county level, but collecting it can be time-consuming and there's greater variation in data collected at the county level.

Meanwhile, 11 states charge for their eviction court records, according to the data note. Some of those states offer data access through a paid subscription, but others like Colorado charge for each case, a policy Jennings calls "cost-prohibitive" for researchers.

Some Colorado eviction data is available for free, a state judicial branch spokesman told Law360. But most case records cost 25 cents per page when ordered electronically and 75 cents per page for paper copies, according to the Colorado courts' fee schedule. The courts' research and redaction fee is $30 per hour.

"Retrieving, and when necessary, redacting court records and then sending them to a requestor or otherwise making them available for public inspection takes time and other resources that are in shorter-than-usual supply in Colorado these days due to the pandemic," the spokesman said.

Inconsistencies in Data

The consistency and quality of the data itself is also a stumbling block for researchers.

While initial case filings are usually consistent, key information recorded later in an eviction case, like the details of hearings, settlements and judgments, are often entered haphazardly into electronic records, which can vary from court to court and even clerk to clerk.

"LSC analysts have spent many hours investigating how often a piece of information is present or missing, and frequently must abandon analyzing a given topic or site because the data is too inconsistent," the report said.

Other researchers looking to study eviction trends have encountered similar problems.

In a 2020 paper, researchers at the Princeton University Eviction Lab found that 22% of eviction records didn't clearly say how a case was resolved or misrepresented tenants' evictions. South Carolina were the least reliable: nearly half of the state's eviction records contain inaccuracies, according to the paper.

"High levels of opaqueness add uncertainty to research efforts aimed at estimating eviction rates," the researchers wrote. "For tenants, the impact is more complex. Tenants with opaque outcomes who in fact won their cases are potentially harmed since their record does not clearly communicate their victory."

A spokesperson for the South Carolina Judicial Branch said in a statement that while it recognizes the importance of accurate court eviction data, "we question the validity of this study, which uses decade-old eviction data from only 12 states, each of which appears to have reported different types of information."

Variations in the terms used to record eviction cases can also make it difficult to analyze those cases. Pinellas County, Florida, for instance, most often labeled evictions with the term "delinquent tenant-county" from 2016 to 2019, the data note said. But in early 2020, that term was replaced by "eviction possession only (non-monetary)." Later that year, the predominant label for such cases changed again to "residential eviction possession only (non-monetary)."

An eviction can also be recorded as "unlawful detainer," "dispossession" and "rule to vacate" in some records, and some jurisdictions use only codes, according to LSC.

"Cleaning" that data can be very time- and labor-intensive, Jennings said.

It can also require the help of local legal experts.

The problem isn't limited to eviction research, Jennings pointed out. LSC is collecting data for a larger court data project, including consumer data and data on domestic violence, she said, but variations in that data and its quality have slowed analysis.

"In court systems where information is recorded in a non-standard manner, analysts dedicate hours to tackling numerous obstacles that could heavily skew results if not addressed properly," the report said.

Making Eviction Data More Accessible

Maricopa County, Arizona's Justice Courts is one of the jurisdictions that is working to make eviction records more consistent and available for research, LSC said.

The county's courts provide monthly spreadsheets with information including the date of an eviction case filing, the address of the eviction, the tenant's name, whether the tenant was represented by an attorney, who won the case, and whether there was a writ of restitution — an order for the constable to lock a tenant out of the property — issued, according to Scott Davis, the public information officer for the Maricopa County Justice Courts.

The data-sharing project began over three years ago in partnership with the Arizona Department of Housing, which wanted to learn how best to get eviction information and assistance to those who needed it, Davis said.

Maricopa County's eviction data turned out to be "surprisingly robust," Davis said. "I had no idea that it was so difficult for other jurisdictions to release this kind of data."

The data is currently free, and those approved for access to it are usually universities and city, state and county governments and government agencies as well as entities working with governments and court systems to better the justice system, according to Davis.

"There is value in making information public," he said.

Davis acknowledged there are still gaps in that information. Any developments in a case that take place outside court, such as if a tenant simply moves out or works out a deal with the landlord, aren't recorded.

Case files also don't include demographic data such as the age, race and gender of a litigant, information researchers often want but that is irrelevant to court proceedings, Davis said.

And the data-sharing effort does have a cost in staff time and resources, Davis pointed out. He said he spends about two days each month going through the data himself before he can send it out.

That's a burden that smaller counties with smaller court systems and staffs may not be able to shoulder, and even in large Maricopa County, the free nature of the data may be reevaluated in the future, he said.

"There is a cost to that which we are just eating right now in the interests of the greater good," Davis said.

For the time being, though, data-sharing projects like Maricopa County's speed research into evictions and thus improve access to justice by allowing researchers to focus on analyzing the data rather than chasing it and cleaning it up, according to LSC.

LSC's eviction research has already yielded an eviction tracker, a database of eviction laws and two issue briefs, according to Jennings. She is planning four more briefs on topics like the speed of the eviction process and innovations in legal representation in evictions. A final report will likely be released in February.

"Tackling the issues in eviction data is a large undertaking; however, efforts, like those underway in Maricopa County, provide an example of how improving data accessibility enables researchers to help jurisdictions understand local issues and develop solutions," LSC said.

"Overcoming these issues and further reducing barriers can translate into concrete improvements for low-income Americans across the country," it said.

--Editing by Brian Baresch. Graphic by Ben Jay.

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