Ep 29: Landlords, Discrimination, and Eviction with Eva Rosen and Philip Garboden

Landlords don’t have a great reputation. But despite the central role that landlords play in the housing market, there is surprisingly little research into how they operate. Eva Rosen and Philip Garboden interviewed more than 150 landlords in Baltimore, Dallas, Cleveland, and Washington, D.C. in an effort to better understand the motivations behind their actions — in their own words. On the one hand, they see real problems with the actions of landlords. This includes frequent use of eviction threats and filings, reframing the landlord-tenant relationship into one of creditor-debtor, and application processes that seek to proactively identify “good” tenants — and which often violate fair housing laws, intentionally or not. They also see stark differences between small “mom-and-pop” and larger, more “professionalized” landlords, though perhaps not in the ways one might expect. On the other hand, they observe a system of housing provision that asks more than landlords can necessarily offer, while society as a whole shirks its responsibilities to many of those who need housing assistance. Eva and Philip join us to share their findings and discuss possible solutions.