How can we increase the use of housing stability services among tenants at risk of eviction?
Project Summary
Every month, thousands of Boston residents face eviction. Eviction – even just the threat of eviction – can have serious and long-lasting adverse impacts on health, socio-economic, and education outcomes. The People Lab is working with the City of Boston’s Office of Housing Stability (OHS) to co-design and test the effectiveness of behaviorally-informed outreach aimed at connecting tenants at risk of eviction to available housing stabilization resources. This study launched in Summer 2024, with initial results expected in late 2025.
Why is this issue important?
Evictions have been shown to have profound and far-reaching consequences on people’s economic, health, and mental health outcomes. Importantly, evictions also disproportionately affect Black households and families with children, thus exacerbating racial and socioeconomic inequities. The government offers many resources to help prevent eviction and mitigate its effects, including financial assistance and legal aid, but there is little rigorous evidence on how to increase access to and use of these services, nor on their impact for Boston residents.
What are we doing?
In collaboration with OHS, we co-designed two different behaviorally-informed outreach messages: one message emphasizes the availability and effectiveness of city resources, while the other message emphasizes tenants’ rights to take action to prevent eviction. Each week, all Boston tenants who are facing imminent eviction proceedings will be randomly assigned to receive one of the two outreach messages. We will then measure the impact of outreach on engagement with the mailer and OHS services, as well as eviction outcomes.
What have we learned?
This study is ongoing.
What comes next?
Initial results are expected in late 2025.