This is the deck used in the webinar Evictions in Harris County: Twenty Years of Data, viewable here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnZwf4VTjes

1. Evictions in Harris County
Twenty years of data
March 27, 2019
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2. Your hosts
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Lori Pampilo Harris
Executive Director
Houston Housing Collaborative
Jeff Reichman
Principal
January Advisors

3. About the Houston Housing Collaborative
● HHC is a collective of housing practitioners, organizations and individuals
who care deeply about housing and community development in our
communities.
● The primary goal of our advocates, is for the City of Houston to develop,
adopt and implement a comprehensive equitable housing policy
framework through a comprehensive housing plan.
● Nearly 215,000 Houston households spend more than half of their income
on housing. https://www.texasmonthly.com/news/houston-aggressive-radical-plan-sell-affordable-housing/
● Only 19 affordable housing units exist for every one hundred extremely
low-income households in Greater Houston. https://reports.nlihc.org/gap/2018/tx
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4. About January Advisors
● Data science consulting
firm based in Houston.
● Specializes in public and
non-profit sector clients.
● Works on data analysis,
visualization, and strategy
projects.
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5. What we’ll cover today
● A history of eviction case activity since 1999
● Bad data leads to bad conclusions
● Data about the COVID-19 eviction pause
● The impact of extending the evictions pause
● Landlord and tenant conversations
● Ideas from other regions
● Q&A
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doesn’t include appeals or duplicates

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cases with a final judgment or default
judgment in favor of the plaintiff

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only cases with a status of “Dismissed”

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11. What are these extra cases?
● We suspect they aren’t new, only newly recorded started in 2016.
● After reviewing sample case documents, they were dismissals because:
○ The tenant paid their back rent
○ The tenant already moved out
○ No one showed up to court
○ No reason was given
○ Potentially other reasons
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15. We replicated their approach with fresh data
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16. Eviction Pause
● Across Texas, evictions trials,
hearings, and other proceedings have
been halted.
● Cases can still be filed.
● Expires April 19, 2020.
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17. Cases are still getting filed
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18. What if we need to extend this pause?
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● More people could get
counted in Census 2020.
● Seasonal and geographic
patterns could inform
additional funding for housing
services and rental assistance.
● Advocates should look at the
whole system.

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20. Questions we’re thinking about
● How can renters meet rent obligations if they are unemployed?
● How can landlords meet their financial obligations if tenants don’t pay rent?
● What are the ways we can promote dialogue between landlords and
tenants?
● How can we get housing support services involved prior to eviction case
filings?
● How can we support good things already in motion for Harris County?
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21. How can we work with what we already have?
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22. Thank you!
Lori Pampilo Harris
lori.harris@houstonhousingcollaborative.org
Jeff Reichman
jeff@januaryadvisors.com
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Construct a series of URLs

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Loop through the URLs

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Evictions case dataset
(columns 71 - 76 added during transformation)