(Editor’s note: This article is the first in a series on the Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania’s 2024 Homes Within Reach conference.)
State Rep. Ismail Smith-Wade-El is continuing his efforts to secure a law that would seal many eviction records in Pennsylvania.
“People are being denied housing due to ‘evictions’ that simply didn’t occur,” the Lancaster County Democrat said.
- Previous coverage: Rep. Smith-Wade-El seeks to seal most Pa. eviction records
The problem is that landlords routinely use eviction records as a reason to deny rental applications, even when the tenant won the case, the landlord and tenant settled amicably, the landlord withdrew the filing or it was filed in error.
The records are just docket information, Smith-Wade-El said, but landlords treat them as evidence of guilt, writing off blameless potential tenants as bad risks.
Smith-Wade-El joined Holly Beck, an attorney with Community Legal Services of Philadelphia and Megan Hammond, executive director of the Fair Housing Partnership of Greater Pittsburgh, for a session on eviction records at “Homes Within Reach,” the Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania’s annual conference in Hershey.
Beck was a co-author on “Advancing Pennsylvania’s Housing Futures: Sealing Eviction Records for Housing Stability and Economic Prosperity,” a white paper released last fall. It notes that 114,000 Pennsylvanians had evictions filed against them from summer 2022 to summer 2023.
The mere filing, regardless of its validity, can lead to a cascade of negative consequences, the report says: Substandard housing or homelessness, financial and health instability, worsening school performance for children and more.
Until the Internet era, the status of eviction records wasn’t a major issue, Beck said. But once court systems put them online, companies began collecting the data, budling it and selling it to landlords. Upward of 90% of landlords use it, she said.
Discrimination based on eviction record checks disproportionately affects tenants who are poor, female and non-White, Hammond said. Advocates have used that to make “disparate impact” cases, arguing that excluding renters based on the mere existence of an eviction filing violates the federal Fair Housing Act.
It’s a systemic issue, Beck said: If you look at an old redlining map and a current map showing eviction filings “they’re the same map.”
Smith-Wade-El is a co-sponsor of the Fair Housing Access Bill, which would establish a statewide eviction sealing policy.
The legislation has gone through several iterations, he said. The most comprehensive version would seal any eviction record that ended up being withdrawn, dismissed or settled, or in which the tenant won the case. All other eviction records would remain public for seven years, which aligns with the time limit for reporting adverse credit findings under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
That’s a lot, and the bill’s backers have come to believe they may have more success if they break it into smaller components. Accordingly, the current version would do two things: bar evictions from being posted until the case is complete, and require evictions to be sealed after seven years. Legal aid agencies say those provisions would help thousands of Pennsylvanians, Smith-Wade-El said.
Landlords say they’re concerned about legislation that would deny them access to relevant information about potential tenants. Background checks help property owners keep their buildings safe and habitable, landlord Anil Dahm said at a February hearing on the Fair Housing Access Bill. Expungement of an eviction for nonpayment after a few years might be acceptable, he said, but it’s a risk not to know if someone was evicted recently, and why.
Six states have laws to automatically seal evictions: Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Jersey and Utah. Illinois, Texas and parts of Ohio allow eviction sealing by petition, but that puts the onus on renters to know that’s an option and go through the process, the panelists said.
Eviction sealing is not a “waiver of bad behavior,” Hammond said. Rather, it’s a way of protecting tenants who have done nothing wrong.
Smith-Wade-El said the Fair Housing Bill will be reintroduced early next year. He and Aaron Zappia, the Housing Alliance’s director of government affairs, acknowledged that movement has been slow, but said they believe it will eventually pass.
