Background

Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma (LASO) recently received a grant to pilot a “Right to Counsel” (RTC) program for residents of two Tulsa zip codes. Throughout the 18 months of the program, LASO will offer legal representation to all defendants in eviction cases to better understand the impact of this intervention on outcomes in these cases. In this report, we provide context on the area that LASO is piloting this program and how it compares to the rest of the county. It will also discuss the impacts we will measure as the program progresses.

Eviction filings and judgment data was collected by Open Justice Oklahoma (OJO) from the Oklahoma State Court Network (OSCN) website and supplemented by manually entered address data. Population and income data are 2019 American Community Survey 5-year estimates. Most of our analysis will revolve around 2019, the last “normal” year before the COVID-19 pandemic. As our eviction courts begin to resemble what they were pre COVID, this will give us a good idea of what to expect going forward, though some time series data going up through part of 2022 will be used as necessary as well.

Characteristics of Target and Comparison Zip Codes

LASO’s RTC program will provide legal representation to defendants two zip codes: 74105 and 74136. Along with these two zip codes, we have selected two other zip codes, 74145 and 74133, as controls to compare both filing and judgment rates over time. They were selected due to their proximity in population, geographic area, and the number of eviction filings per capita. For the purposes of clarity, our target zip codes and related elements will be highlighted in yellow, whereas our two zip codes that we’ll be using for comparison will be represented with purple.

This section describes the population, income, and eviction patterns of the zip codes in the target and comparison groups.

Population

The target zip codes, outlined in yellow below, are some of the more populous zip codes in Tulsa County. The comparison zip codes together are similar in terms of population to our combined target zip codes, with a population of 64,909 (7.99%) compared to 56,654 (6.97%) for our target zip codes. However, they are not as evenly distributed as our targets. Despite this, they are the best points of reference available. The map below indicates the percentage of Tulsa County’s population within that zip code.

Median Income

Along with being densely populated, both 74105 and 74136 are in the bottom half of median income in Tulsa County. The median income in Tulsa County in 2019 was around $55,000. 74105 and 74136 however, have median incomes of $54,501, and $44,786 respectively. While 74105 is close to median, 74136 is almost 20% lower than the median. Our comparison zip codes each have higher median incomes than the one they are most similar to. 74145 has a median income of 49,911, which is still below median, but somewhat higher than 74136. 74133 goes far beyond this, reaching just above 62,000 for it’s median income, much higher than the Tulsa’s overall, as well as 74105, which it’s meant to compare to.

Severely Rent Burdened Households

Our target and comparison zip codes are also home to high numbers of severely rent burdened households, defined as households spending 50% or more of their income on rent. Census estimates 2,780 total households meeting this criteria in our target zip codes and 2,669 total households in the comparison zip codes.

Eviction Filings

As expected with high numbers of severely rent burdened households, our target and comparison zip codes also see a large share of Tulsa’s eviction filings. 74136 held the highest single share of eviction filings in 2019, 1,899, and a rate of 21.6 eviction filings per 100 renting households. 74105 comes in lower with 749 and a filing rate of 13 per 100. 74145 saw 1,101 filings, a rate of 29 per 100 renting households, while 74133 saw 1,564, a rate of 34 per 100. Overall, the county had 11,815 evictions we had address level data for, with a rate of 10 per 100 renters, significantly lower than both our target and comparison zip codes.

Each of our comparison zip codes lines up nearly perfectly with one of our target zip codes over time. 74145 mirrors 74136, and 74105 is mirrored by 74133 almost exactly. This means that as the program is enacted, we will have a clear comparison to see what kind of effects on filings and judgments, RTC has on our zip codes. If in a year we see that filings and judgments in 74105 and 74136 no longer mirror our control zip codes and are significantly lower, it will be easy to attribute that as a success for Legal Aid’s efforts.

(Note: Due to gaps in data collection, OJO’s database is missing address data for evictions filed in late 2021 and early 2022, but we plan to have these gaps filled in the coming months.)

Eviction Judgments

While eviction filings alone are harmful to tenants, providing representation also seeks to reduce eviction judgments leading to displacement. 74136 and 74105 are first and third in total evictions among Tulsa County zip codes, with 1,077 and 553 respectively. These high rates make them excellent candidates for this program. Our comparison zip codes are second and fourth, making them again suitable controls for comparison.

Default Judgments

Possession granted to plaintiffs usually occur in Oklahoma for one of two reasons. One is when a judge, after hearing the case, grants possession of the property to the plaintiff. Often, however, the defendant misses their hearing, and in those cases, a Default Judgment for the plaintiff is usually entered automatically. Oftentimes, these defaults are due to a lack of communication on the part of courts to educate tenants on the process and how to act in their best interest. RTC has been shown to reduce both types of judgments (see this report released last year by Open Justice Oklahoma ) analyzing eviction outcomes in Tulsa over the past decade. Trends in both judgments and default judgments will be tracked throughout this project.

Comparing the ratio of defaults to all judgments granted, it’s clear that default judgment is the most common outcome, with only one zip code having less than half of its evictions decided by default. While 74105 and 74136 do not have the highest numbers in this regard, defaults are still the vast majority of their judgments.

Other Aspects of Evictions in Tulsa County

We will examine several aspects that enhance our understanding of filings: the most active plaintiffs, subsidized vs. unsubsidized landlords, and filings for cause vs. for late rent.

Plaintiffs with most eviction filings

First, looking at the landlords and complexes that file the most evictions, a few things stand out. They are all large, lower to middle income self-described “luxury” apartment complexes. Four of the top 10 filers are located in the program’s two targeted zip codes, meaning that this program will be in direct contact with some of the more aggressive landlords in Tulsa County. As for our comparison zip codes, we only have two of the top 10, but they are both in the top 5, so our control zip codes should continue to make strong comparisons for our test area.

Now, comparing our last normal year 2019 to 2021, we can see a few differences. As expected, evictions for our top ten are overall lower than they were before, reflecting national and statewide trends. While our zip codes have fewer total landlords in the top ten, they still hold the top two spots, and three on the list total, as well as a few right on the cusp. Notably, one of our leading evictors of previous years, Vista at Shadow Mountain, was condemned last year, and all of it’s residents displaced due to poor living conditions. Due to this, it’s no longer on the list, and if it takes time for it to reopen, we will need to take that into consideration as we use 74145 as a comparison zip code. It’s also interesting to note that a mobile home park has also risen into the top ten, though as it’s not in any of our zip codes that might not have much of an impact. However, as eviction filings and judgments continue to approach and even exceed 2019 levels, it will be important to see if more mobile homes and other types of renters continue to rise, or if our eviction landscape does begin to reflect it’s pre COVID-19 conditions.

Moving on to the top filers in 74136 and 74105, it’s clear that again, our top filers are large apartment commercial apartment complexes. The leading filing landlord, an apartment complex in 74136, charges $600-900 per month. This range contains the median cost of rent for Tulsa, which as of 2019 was $861 according to the U.S. Census. The rest are similar. Of the two, 74136 holds a much higher share of the top filers. A graph of the top 10 filers in our comparison zip codes is provided as well.

We have limited these charts to landlords with 50 or more evictions filed in 2019.

When looking at comparison zip codes, the most notable point of interest is how top heavy 74145 is, with two of their landlords reaching above 300. However, VISTA has closed, so it will be important to note how that affects total evictions in that zip code. The only other thing that stands out is that 74105’s largest filer, London Square, is somewhat smaller than the largest filers in 74136, as well as our comparison zip codes, with filings in 2019 only filing slightly above 150 evictions. The other three zip codes all have at least one complex that filed more than 200 evictions in the same time span.

Subsidized vs Unsubsidized Complexes

Next, we’ll be looking at the differences between landlords who do and do not accept government subsidies. These subsidies can include section 8 vouchers or being insured by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, as well as a variety of different tax credits. For the purposes of this section, we will be looking at five specific landlords provided to us by LASO that receive subsidies. They range in size from a few dozen units to some with a few hundred. Despite the large variety in the types of subsidies received by these landlords, it appears that subsidized complexes do file evictions at lower rates compared to their un-subsidized counterparts.

The example subsidized landlords fall on the lower end of the distribution of plaintiffs with more than 5 evictions in 2019. Two of them, James Inhofe and St. Thomas Square, didn’t have a single eviction in our data for 2019. Only one, Savanna Landing, had more than 11, despite having about 300 total units.

Damages vs Back Rent

Using data in court records, we distinguish filings based on back rent, lease violations, and damages. We categorize any case in which there is an amount owed as a “back rent” eviction and “lease violation” evictions as any eviction in which the plaintiff seeks only possession of the property. Finally, damage evictions often include an amount owed, but for damages allegedly caused by the tenant to the property rather than due to rent. Damage evictions often have much higher amounts owed compared to back rent evictions. If cases feature both damages and back rent, they are labeled as damages, and along with lease violations indicate something other than nonpayment of rent might be the reason for the eviction.

These distinctions are important because LASO plans to focus more resources on back rent evictions rather than the other two types. However, looking at the distribution of landlords based on how many of their eviction filings are due only to back rent, an overwhelming majority of landlords only ever file back rent evictions. We filtered out landlords with fewer than five evictions to avoid duplicates or single filing landlords, but even with that, 53% of these landlords only ever file back rent evictions, with no lease violation or damage eviction filings on record. This shows that in Tulsa County at least, most of whom LASO will be helping will be due to issues with back rent.

Looking at this at the zip code level, it’s clear that the county wide trend also holds up in 74105 and 74136, where 95% and 98% of filings include back rent respectively. Eviction filings for possession only are very rare in the target and comparison zip codes, just as they are in the county overall. the same goes for our comparison zip codes, which each have back rent ratios of 99%, an even higher but still comparable amount. No matter where you are in Tulsa County however, eviction filings without a back rent component are extremely rare.

Finally, looking at eviction outcomes by filing type, it’s clear that while lease violations have a significantly higher eviction rate as compared to the other two, both damages and back rent have a total eviction rate of above 50% still, meaning that landlords are getting desired outcomes a majority of the time.

Conclusions

In this report we’ve outlined the demographic landscape of the two target zip codes of LASO’s RTC program, illustrating the slightly lower income level of the areas, as well as the significantly over-sized share of eviction filings and judgments the two zip codes have as compared to their population size. We’ve also discussed the importance of this program to lowering default evictions, and to helping tenants understand their own best interest, an area where currently the current court system is failing them. We illustrated the specific landlords LASO will most likely be dealing with during their expansion into these two zip codes, as well as illustrating that they will be helping the tenants they want to the most with their work here. Finally, we have laid the groundwork for measuring long term success by outlining metrics, and finding similar zip codes that will serve as a control comparison for our current test area.