Community and Urban Sociology

By Melody L. Boyd (SUNY Brockport) and John Balzarini (Delaware State University)

If it’s been a while since you’ve been to Philadelphia, you’ll notice some shimmering additions to the skyline when you arrive for ASA 2023. You’ll likely need to reroute a block or two to navigate around scaffolding and closed streets as you head to dinner after a day of conferencing. You may want to bring a pair of ear plugs to minimize the construction noise as you move around the city. While Gritty was unveiled in 2018 as the Flyers mascot, the city has gotten quite a bit shinier and new in recent years. Of course, as sociologists we know that shiny and new—which on the surface may seem attractive—actually corresponds with increased inequality as competition for housing intensifies. In the context of these changes throughout the city we conducted research looking at the attitudes, perspectives, and experiences of one of Philadelphia’s most important housing providers—landlords. In this article, we highlight some of our findings from this research, focusing on how landlords navigate evictions amidst an increasingly hot Philly housing market.

Philadelphia is the center of one of the largest metropolitan regions in the country, and its dynamics of deindustrialization, gentrification, and lack of affordable housing are comparable with those of many cities throughout the country.[i] Philadelphia endured the devastating effects of deindustrialization and white flight to the suburbs throughout the latter half of the 20th century and is experiencing a return of capital investment and people that has intensified over the last 20 years.[ii] Although Philadelphia has undergone significant capital reinvestment of its downtown and surrounding neighborhoods, this renaissance is exacerbating an already existing housing crisis in Philadelphia. Historically, Philadelphia has been a city of row houses passed down from generation to generation; it is now increasingly a renter-occupied city, experiencing a 15.3% increase in renter households between 2000 and 2014.[iii] Mirroring national trends, the demand for rental housing in Philadelphia has increased significantly,[iv] and gentrification has tightened rental housing markets to the detriment of low-income renters.[v] Philadelphia’s poverty rate is 22.3%, making it one of the poorest big cities in the country, and nearly one-third of its low-income renters spend 50% or more of their income on rent.[vi] Philadelphia’s high poverty rate, gentrification, rising rents, and tightening housing market are causing low-income renters to face increasing burdens and barriers to affordable housing, including eviction. In 2020, the eviction rate in Philadelphia was 3.48%, and one out of every 14 renters had an eviction filed against them, totaling more than 20,000 people.[vii] Since then the rate of evictions continues to soar year over year.

We wanted to understand landlords’ experiences within this shifting landscape, so between 2017 and 2019 we conducted 71 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with landlords and property managers in the Philadelphia area as well as 6 interviews with tenants’ rights advocates. We also conducted weeks of participant observation with both a residential and a commercial rental real estate company. Here we summarize our findings from our paper in Housing Policy Debate showing how the small-scale landlords in our sample worked with tenants to avoid evictions.[viii]

One of our respondents, Paul, described how he worked with a tenant who had fallen behind on her rent. The tenant had been out of work for a few months and her boyfriend, a construction worker, was dealing with an injury that prevented him from working. First, Paul and his tenant established a line of communication. Through numerous conversations, Paul became aware of his tenant’s unemployment and her boyfriend’s medical issues. As a result of this dialogue, Paul allowed them some flexibility to get back on track with the rent. Paul decided to waive many months of accumulated late fees if the tenant agreed to pay the rent plus an additional amount each month until the back rent was paid off. The tenant then inquired about opportunities for her boyfriend to do some light maintenance on their home as a way to make up for some of the outstanding rent. Paul agreed to this and wrote up a list of landscaping and maintenance jobs the boyfriend could complete on the tenant’s home as well as on other properties Paul owned in the area. This may seem like an idiosyncratic story, but most landlords we studied described their willingness to work with tenants who were late on the rent or otherwise violating the lease in an attempt to avoid filing for eviction. Similar to findings from other research,[ix] the landlords in our sample often found it more desirable to employ strategies to keep tenants in their homes because of the time, costs, and hassle associated with filing for eviction. We found that effective, consistent communication was a key factor in landlords’ willingness to engage in a process to avoid evicting tenants. As Brett, another landlord from our study explained, “I’m willing to work with them from day one. If they’re communicating with me, trying to keep it going, I’m fine.”

“Working with them” as so many landlords phrased it, includes numerous strategies designed to retain tenants and maintain rental cash flow. These strategies consist of negotiating the timing of rent payment to allow for late payments as well as developing payment plans, offering tenants the option of providing services such as painting, groundskeeping and minor repairs in lieu of rent, connecting tenants to social support services to rally additional resources to buttress tenants’ situations, and forgiving back rent. As a last resort, some landlords described offering tenants money for them to leave in order to avoid having to file an eviction in a process dubbed “cash for keys.” As Mark explained, “You pay them, cash for keys. You pay them to get out.” Many landlords used the threat of eviction and this cash incentive as both a carrot and a stick to convince tenants to vacate. Mark continued to describe this strategy, “All landlords except the slumlords check the records before renting. If you had an eviction in your history, it makes it very difficult to rent another place. People like to avoid that, so that’s why the cash for keys deal works.” Landlords explained that cash for keys was a strategy to take possession of properties quickly so they could complete repairs and rent out units as soon as possible. This was often considered preferable to time-consuming and costly evictions.

While avoiding time intensive and costly eviction proceedings was a primary reason landlords worked with tenants to avoid evictions, landlords also described more tenant-focused reasons for avoiding evictions. Some landlords described a sense of commitment they felt toward long-term tenants, and in some cases they felt obligated to protect long-term tenants from displacement. Additionally, given that profit margins are much tighter for small-scale landlords—many simply cannot afford to have units vacant for an extended period of time—means that in some cases it is more desirable for a landlord to keep a tenant in their home than evict them.

A small number of landlords in our study did not work with tenants and simply filed for eviction as soon as tenants violated the terms of the lease. But we found that in almost all of these cases these landlords had once employed strategies to avoid evictions with former tenants, but because of numerous experiences where they felt strained, taken advantage of, or dejected by the process, had simply given up trying to work with tenants and resolved to take a more hard-line approach to dealing with tenants in the future. Nevertheless, at one time working with tenants was part of how they did business.

The differences in scale and organizational structure between small-scale landlords and large-scale rental real estate companies is important for understanding the likelihood that landlords will work with tenants. If small-scale landlords often find it practical to work with tenants, as our research suggests, large rental real estate companies do not generally practice these approaches and thus are far more likely to evict struggling tenants.[x] Our findings point to the importance of small-scale landlords in regional housing markets, especially for low-income tenants. But as neoliberal housing policies and gentrification continue to reshape urban housing markets, rents will increase as the demand for housing and space intensifies, thus constraining access to housing for low-income renters. If small-scale landlords themselves become victims of these market pressures and liquidate their properties as large rental real estate companies expand, then the flexibility and negotiation between small-scale landlords and low-income and struggling renters will become less common. Thus, it is crucial that rental housing policy consider the impact of economic pressures on small-scale landlords and their role in urban housing markets.

The landlords who used these off-the-books inducements framed them as amicable alternatives which benefited both parties; landlords got possession of their units quickly and tenants could vacate without reprisal, and in some cases receive some money. Most importantly, tenants avoided having an eviction on their record. While avoiding having an eviction on their record was perceived as preferable, the reality is that even if tenants were given a small sum of money to vacate, or did not repay back rent, they were still displaced from their homes. Off-the-books evictions are evictions nonetheless, and they contribute to patterns of displacement and housing insecurity for the most vulnerable Americans.[xi] However, since these strategies are by design meant to avoid courts, they are not recorded and thus are not recognized in official eviction rates. Future research on eviction and housing displacement should take into account the off-the-books forms of residential displacement that we describe, including cash for keys. Our understanding of America’s eviction crisis is lacking these off-the-books evictions, thereby diminishing the perceived severity of the crisis. Neighborhood displacement and housing insecurity are primary outcomes of eviction—whether on the record or off the books. Thus, although cash for keys is likely preferable for many tenants to a formal eviction, it nonetheless exacerbates the crisis of housing insecurity for low-income renters. Therefore, more research is needed to better estimate rates, and understand the prevalence and consequences of these off-the-books evictions.

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[i] Ding, Hwang, & Divringi, 2015; Pew Charitable Trusts, 2016, 2018b

[ii] Adams et al., 1991; Adams, Bartelt, Elesh, & Goldstein, 2008; Beauregard, 1990; Pew Charitable Trusts, 2016; Smith, 1996; Spain, 1993

[iii]Chizeck, 2016; PewCharitable Trusts, 2014, 2019

[iv] Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, 2020; Pew Charitable Trusts, 2018b; Wachter & Acolin, 2016

[v] Chizeck, 2016; Leopold, Getsinger, Blumenthal, Abazajian, & Jordan, 2015; Pew Charitable Trusts, 2018a

[vi] U.S. Census 2023; Pew Charitable Trusts, 2019

[vii] Eviction Lab, 2020; Terruso, 2018

[viii] Balzarini and Boyd, 2021

[ix] see Garboden & Rosen, 2019

[x] Garboden & Rosen, 2019; Immergluck et al., 2019; Raymond et al., 2016, 2018; Seymour & Akers, 2019; Sternlieb, 1966

[xi] Desmond, 2016