What if moratoriums and tenant protection programs put in place to help renters facing eviction actually increase homelessness rather than prevent it? That's one of the thorny and counterintuitive questions raised in a new academic paper about how society addresses the housing crisis. The Welfare Effects of Eviction and Homelessness Policies, published late last year, was written by Stanford University Ph.D. candidate Boaz Abramson using detailed data from San Diego to measure the impact of all-out eviction moratoriums on homelessness like those introduced during the pandemic. The paper also examined the longer-term effects of measures like right-to-counsel legislation to slow and sometimes reverse the eviction process. Abramson’s study found that far from helping, right-to-counsel laws drive up rents for lower-income renters to such levels that homelessness actually increases by 15%. 
But other measures cut the opposite direction. Providing $400 a month in direct rental assistance for lower-income renters reduces homelessness by 45% and evictions by 75%, Abramson found, and it pays for itself: The cost of the rental assistance is lower than the cost of paying…  Read the full story here. | 
