Tag Archives: counties

Big Eviction Data

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photo by Tim Patterson

The Eviction Lab, run by Princeton University Professor Matthew Desmond (of Evicted fame) has recently released its Methodology Report and related resources. The introduction to the report opens,

In recent years, renters’ housing costs have far outpaced their incomes, driving a nationwide affordability crisis. Current data from the American Housing Survey show that most poor renting families spend at least 50 percent of their income on housing costs. Under these conditions, 1 millions of Americans today are at risk of losing their homes through eviction.

An eviction occurs when a landlord forcibly expels a tenant from a residence. While the majority of evictions are attributed to nonpayment of rent, landlords may evict tenants for a variety of other reasons, including property damage, nuisance complaints, or lease violations. A formal eviction occurs when a landlord carries out an eviction through the court system. Conversely, an informal eviction occurs when a landlord executes an eviction without initiating a legal process. For example, a landlord may offer a buyout or perform an illegal lock-out. Until recently, little was known about the prevalence, causes, and consequences of eviction.

The Eviction Lab at Princeton University has collected, cleaned, geocoded, aggregated, and publicized all recorded court-ordered evictions that occurred between 2000 and 2016 in the United States. This data set consists of 82,935,981 million court records related to eviction cases in the United States between 2000 and 2016, gleaned from multiple sources. It is the most comprehensive data set of evictions in America to date.

These data allow us to estimate the national prevalence of court-ordered eviction, and to compare eviction rates among states, counties, cities, and neighborhoods. We can observe eviction trends over time and across geography, and researchers can link these data to other sources of information. (2)

In sum, the Eviction Lab has created “the most comprehensive data set of evictions in America.” (41) This data set is obviously of great importance and will lead to important research about what it means to be poor in the United States. The Eviction Lab website has a user-friendly mapping function among other resources for researchers and policymakers.

Reiss on GSE Transfer Taxes

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Law360 quoted me in Fannie, Freddie Look Unstoppable In Transfer Tax Fight (behind a paywall).  It reads in part,

Class actions against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid transfer taxes in states and cities around the country continue to pile up, but experts say any attempt to challenge the housing giants’ exempt status is likely futile as court after court rules in their favor.

The Eighth Circuit on Friday joined the Third, Fourth, Sixth and Seventh circuits in ruling that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are exempt from local transfer taxes when it ruled in favor of the government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs, after reviewing a suit brought by Swift County, Minnesota.

Swift County, as with a multitude of counties, municipalities and states before it, sought to dispute Fannie and Freddie’s claim that while they must pay property taxes, they are exempt from additional taxes on transfers of assets. But in what some experts say has come to seem like an inevitable answer, the Eighth Circuit found in favor of Fannie and Freddie.

“The federal statutes that set forth the charters of Fannie and Freddie are pretty clear that the two companies have a variety of regulatory privileges that other companies don’t,” David Reiss, a professor at Brooklyn Law School, said. “One of the privileges is an exemption from nearly all state and local taxation.”

The legal onslaught against the GSEs began in 2012 after U.S. District Judge Victoria A. Roberts ruled in March that they should not be considered federal agencies. In a suit filed by Oakland County, Michigan, over millions in unpaid transfer taxes, Judge Roberts rejected the charter exemption argument and, citing a 1988 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in U.S. v. Wells Fargo, found that “all taxation” refers only to direct taxes and not excise taxes like those imposed on asset transfers.

Counties, municipalities and states across the country were emboldened by the decision. Putative class actions soon followed in West Virginia, Illinois, Minnesota, Florida, Rhode Island, Georgia and elsewhere as plaintiffs rushed to see if they could elicit a similar ruling and recoup millions of dollars allegedly lost thanks to the inability to tax Fannie and Freddie’s mortgage foreclosure operations.

But Judge Roberts’ decision was later overturned by the Sixth Circuit, as were other similar orders, though many district judges found in favor of Fannie and Freddie from the start.

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Many cases remain in the lower courts as well, but experts say the outcomes will likely echo those that played out in the Third, Fourth Sixth, Seventh and Eighth circuits, because the defendants’ chartered exemption defense appears waterproof.

“I find the circuit court decisions unsurprising and consistent with the letter and spirit of the law,” Reiss said. “I am guessing that other federal courts will follow this trend.”