DC Housing Advocates Warn of ‘Critical Data Gap’ as District is Poised to Roll Back Tenant Protections

Washington, D.C. is poised to enact the Rebalancing Expectations for Neighbors, Tenants and Landlords (RENTAL) Act, a rollback of pandemic-era tenant protections that could lead to a rising number of evictions in the District.

But as Yuliya Panfil and Sabiha Zainulbhai explaoins in an analysis in Greater Greater Washington, the District lacks the data to understand how this will impact residents. According to the authors, “The annual counts the Superior Court does publish show that tens of thousands of DC renters receive an eviction filing each year. Yet councilmembers are not able to track why these filings happen, where in the city they are concentrated, and who is most impacted.”

The article notes that “without accessible and comprehensive data on evictions, it’s nearly impossible to pass data-driven, targeted, and effective policies that keep people housed. It’s also difficult to counter misleading narratives that suggest that allowing evictions to occur on a faster timeline will improve housing stability citywide.”

The authors’ research team collected and released the first public data on D.C. eviction filings since 2019. According to their research, “eviction filings across the District have plunged nearly 60% since before the pandemic, dropping from an average of 30,455 per year between 2016 and 2019 to a projected 12,565 in 2025.”  This is in part due to protections put in place during the Covid-19 pandemic that the RENTAL Act will undo. The authors urge D.C. councilmembers to create the mechanisms to more accurately tracks eviction data and trends across the District as the RENTAL Act takes effect.