Dear friend,

Welcome to Frontier, the monthly newsletter from the Future of Land and Housing Program at New America. This month, we're excited to welcome Maya Thompson to our team as a communications intern. We've also kicked off the new year with a flurry of activity:

🔊 In early February, we plan to release our eviction and foreclosure data tool, developed in partnership with DataKind, the Eviction Prevention Lab, and 14 local partners. The tool kit will be accompanied by a user guide, an FAQ guide, blog posts, and other resources.

🔊 Yesterday, we held an online event exploring innovations in property registration services. Discussion centered on creative financing models to help make these services accessible to the lowest-income households. View a recording here. 

🔊 And ICYMI: HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research submitted a report to Congress on the feasibility of creating a national eviction database last fall, drawing on FLH's eight recommendations for building local eviction databases that feed into a national one.

Here's what else we've been up to:

What We're Doing

Informal Evictions: Measuring Displacement Outside the Courtroom

We’re nearly two years into the pandemic, and our understanding of housing displacement remains murky at best. This is in large part because most displacement in the U.S. likely occurs outside of the courtroom, through "informal evictions," which are inherently difficult to define and measure.

In a brief released today, Sabiha Zainulbhai and Nora Daly shed light on what constitutes an "informal eviction," why they are so difficult to measure, and review existing measurement strategies and steps forward for localities attempting to collect data on these invisible evictions for the first time.

You can read the full brief here.

What's Love Got to do With It? The Voluntary Guidelines on Tenure, Ten Years Later 

Ten years ago, the international land rights community signed a historic United Nations agreement, the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure (VGGT). 

The agreement, negotiated through a unique and inclusive process, initially led to a whirlwind of activity at international forums and in development work.

But in the decade since, the VGGT hasn't created impact at scale, write Gregory Myers and Jolyne Sanjak in a guest blog for New America. Yet there still remains some promise of addressing land and property rights via the guidelines, especially if they're combined with other international resources and country-level reforms.

Read Gregory and Jolyne's guest post on the FLH Blog here.

What Happened to the Eviction Tsunami?

Since the pandemic began, housing experts have predicted that COVID-19's economic fallout would produce an eviction tsunami that displaces as many as 40 million Americans.

The experts are still waiting, as evictions in many cities are nearly 40 percent below historical averages. A mix of preventive measures, such as the federal eviction moratorium and an influx of emergency rental assistance; accommodating landlords that are working with struggling tenants; and unrecorded "informal evictions" all likely contribute to this decline. 

But as Yuliya Panfil and David Spievack wrote for FiveThirtyEight, the U.S. Census Bureau data used for this initial estimate was also a pretty poor barometer of likely evictions.

Read their piece exploring why the predictions surrounding an eviction tsunami haven't come true here.

What We're Reading

FLH staff share what has stood out to them lately on land, housing, and property rights in the U.S. and internationally.

Yuliya Panfil

Brazil's illegal gold rush is fueling corruption, violent crime and deforestation: Illegal mining is surging across the Amazon, and along with corruption and violence, it is fueling rapid deforestation and land grabbing. In Brazil, where tens of thousands of small-scale miners work across more than 320 illegal mines, mining within Indigenous zones increased by almost 500 percent and mining in conservation unit areas increased by over 300 percent over the last decade. Research shows that protecting Indigenous land rights and setting up protected areas are critical to curbing deforestation. We wonder, will the Government of Brazil step up to put these protections in place, or will the country's lack of political will to address its deforestation crisis persist?

Sabiha Zainulbhai

The Landlord’s Worst Nightmare Is a Basic Human Right: Like most states in the U.S., landlords in New York State can increase rent or refuse to renew a tenant’s lease for no reason. Lease non-renewal without “just cause” occurs daily, serving as a de-facto eviction, and perhaps even more regularly during the pandemic when more formal methods of eviction have been limited. A Good Cause Eviction bill in New York would regulate rent increases and require landlords to provide cause for termination of leases. This video, produced by Jeff Seal, a comedian and housing advocate, details how this legislation could keep millions of New York renters stably housed. 

Tim Robustelli

'Tenants have no choice': Racism in urban planning fuels high rate of Black fire deaths: The deadly house fires in the Bronx and Philadelphia are sadly nothing new for minority communities in the United States. Racial discrimination in the American housing system means that low-income Black and Hispanic households routinely move into neglected rental units rife with maintenance and safety issues. Exacerbating these problems, marginalized groups often hesitate in advocating for improved living conditions, fearing a retaliatory rent hike or eviction. So with scant options due to tight budgets, families are left to manage risks like fires on their own. The results are tragic; for example, Black people in the U.S. represent 25 percent of individuals killed in residential fires, but only make up 13 percent of the population. Beyond more tenant-friendly laws, could city officials and housing advocates use public data to help improve substandard homes and hold negligent landlords accountable before disaster strikes?

Thoughts on our work or where we're headed? Reach out to us at FLH@NewAmerica.org or tag us at @FLHatNewAmerica.

Until next month, the FLH Team.

About New America

New America is dedicated to renewing the promise of America, bringing us closer to our nation’s highest ideals. We’re a different kind of think tank: one dedicated to public problem solving. Our team of visionary researchers, changemakers, technologists, and storytellers study and seize the opportunities presented by dramatic social and technological change. We search for powerful ideas, wherever they are, and collaborate with civic innovators around the world to develop evidence-based solutions.

The Future of Land and Housing Program at New America aims to help solve today’s land and housing rights challenges, both in the United States and internationally. Through our research and writing, convening, and collaboration with civic innovators worldwide, we strive to connect new constituencies, shed light on underreported issues, and implement creative approaches in the property rights space.

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