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Sarah Anne Pfitzer

Dr. Heather Finch

Honors Seminar

7 December 2018

Community Proposal: Nashville Evictions and the Legal System

For me, home is certain and stable–a place where my family gathers around the dinner

table, where my dog sleeps by the fireplace, where the television blares with college football. In

other words, home is not just physical shelter, but a sense of ​belonging​–a sense of safety. Home

is where we begin in the morning, where we retire at night, where we cast our worries and our

celebrations and our sorrows. It is no surprise, then, that sociologist Matthew Desmond calls the

home “the wellspring of personhood” in his landmark text ​Evicted (​ 293). Home is–like life,

liberty, and the pursuit of happiness–a fundamental human right. If life begins at home, so too do

our identities and our communities.

However, I’m unfathomably lucky. Here in America, here in Nashville, affordable

housing has become a scarcity, especially for poor renters. According to Sandy Mazza of ​The

Tennessean​, as this city absorbs 100 new residents each day, as incomes stagnate, housing costs

“have jumped with increased demand, triggering an affordable housing crisis among the area’s

poorest residents.” Though evictions used to be rare–even in poor, crime-ravaged districts–“most

poor renting families are [now] spending more than half of their income on housing” (Desmond

4). Eviction, in other words, has become standard, routine, uneventful. In Nashville, they occur

at a staggering rate of 3.42%, a rate above the national average (“Eviction Rankings”). In 2016

alone, 4,457 evictions took place in the Nashville-Davidson area. If that doesn’t sound like a big
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number, that amounts to 12.21 households evicted every day (“Eviction Rankings”). 12.21

households that might not have another home lined up, 12.21 households with the scarlet letter of

eviction placed on their records, 12.21 households with a greater chance at homelessness. In

other words, as Desmond so aptly observes, “eviction is a cause, not just a condition of poverty”

(299), a self-defeating cycle. And the population most negatively affected by this epidemic?

People of color. According to TalkPoverty.org, about one in four African Americans in

Tennessee experience poverty (“Tennessee Report 2018”).

Isn’t the government providing some kind of relief? The answer is yes, but not enough. In

America, only one in four families who qualify for housing assistance (like public housing or a

voucher for the private market) actually receive the aid that they apply for (Gross). In fact, in

Nashville specifically, “the number of Nashville landlords accepting Section 8 vouchers has

decreased from 1,249 in 2010 to 950 today,” according to ​The Tennessean​ (Mezza). The

majority of qualifying families, then, remain unassisted, spending most of their income just to

keep the lights on and the water running. Rent, in other words, comes before other basic

necessities like food and clothing. And worse: previously evicted families cannot receive public

housing because “Housing Authorities count evictions and unpaid debt as strikes when reviewing

applications”; as a tragic result, “people with who have the greatest need for housing

assistance–the rent-burdened and evicted–are systematically denied it” ((Desmond 297). We

cannot let this oppression go any further.

Admittedly, I reside in a white, affluent neighborhood. I attend a private university. As

such, I have the privilege of forgetting that a stable roof is not guaranteed for many Nashville

renters. But despite these privileges, I cannot simply ignore Nashville’s dire housing crisis. After
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all, to stand idly by would be to deny a significant amount of our population the basic human

right of home–a home that brings life, liberty, and happiness to the renter.

As a student planning to attend law school after my undergraduate education, I strongly

believe that the legal system possesses potential for meaningful reform. Though some changes

would be costly and difficult to implement, others are immediately possible.

In 1963, the Supreme Court ruled in ​Gideon v. Wainwright​ that all indigent criminal

defendants should have the right to fair counsel (Demond 303). A fair trial, after all, is

impossible without an attorney who intimately knows how to apply the law. Why don’t we

possess the same mindset in civil court, especially housing court? If home is so fundamental to

our well-being, why has eviction court become an assembly line of papers and stamps? Today,

most tenants who receive evictions do not attend their court dates (Desmond 304): some can’t

afford to miss a day of work, some do not have access to transportation, and others are simply

intimidated by the legal process. As such, Desmond observes, “the principle of due process has

been replaced by mere process” (304). Admittedly, legal efficiency is important and

cost-effective, but we cannot value efficiency at the expense of actual justice. Today, 90 percent

of landlords have access to lawyers, while 90 percent of tenants do not (Desmond 303). In fact,

when I typed in “Eviction Law” into my Google search box, I was met with a plethora of

services for landlords–one brazenly titled Kick’em Out Quick Evictions. Without legal services

for the poor, landlords profit from systematic homelessness–homelessness that could be

prevented with a good defense.

In the city of Nashville, I propose a new precedent of publicly funded legal assistance and

pro bono programs. According to Desmond (a passage worth quoting at length), “Good lawyers
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would raise defenses tenants often don’t…. Lawyers would curb frivolous evictions and

unchecked abuses and help prevent tenants from signing bad stipulations. If eviction weren’t so

easy, tenants could report dangerous or illegal conditions without fearing retaliation” (304).

Though costly at the outset, this proposal would prove cost-effective in the long run. For

example, from 2005 to 2008, a legal initiative in the South Bronx “provided more than 1,300

families with legal assistance,” resulting in an eviction prevention rate of 86%. The success rates

are staggering. And though expensive at first– $450,000– New York City ultimately saved more

than $700,000 “in estimated shelter costs alone” (Desmond 304).

With so many law schools and law practices in Nashville, these statistics–these goals–are

ultimately achievable. When we provide tenants with the right to civil counsel, we send a

message that home is an ideal that we value for ​all​.

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Works Cited

Desmond, Matthew. ​Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City​. Crown/Archetype, 2016.

“Eviction Rankings.”​ Eviction Lab​, Princeton University,

evictionlab.org/rankings/#/evictions?r=United States&a=0&d=evictionRate&lang=en.

Gross, Terry. “First-Ever Evictions Database Shows: ‘We're In the Middle Of A Housing

Crisis.’” ​National Public Radio,​ 12 April 2018,

https://www.npr.org/2018/04/12/601783346/first-ever-evictions-database-shows-were-in-

the-middle-of-a-housing-crisis.

Mazza, Sandy. “Sick and Facing Eviction: Nashville's Affordable Housing Crisis Deepens.” ​The

Tennessean,​ 1 Nov. 2018,

www.tennessean.com/story/news/2018/10/27/sick-and-facing-eviction-nashvilles-afforda

ble-housing-crisis-deepens/1753652002/.

“Tennessee Report 2018.” ​Talk Poverty​, Center for American Progress,

talkpoverty.org/state-year-report/tennessee-2018-report/.