Eviction mediation can save lives. Here's how one Columbus group helps tenants, landlords
As soon as she saw the eviction notice posted on her Columbus apartment door, Lanika Carpenter knew where to go.
Carpenter, 32, of the South Side, found Community Mediation Services of Central Ohio (CMS) when going through the same process a few years ago.
"They really are just the best thing ever," she said.
The nonprofit agency helped her come to an agreement with her landlord last month so that she can stay in her home after she fell behind on rent due to unexpected health issues.
Community Mediation Services provides a nonadversarial, neutral approach to disputes, organizers say, and the process is confidential and voluntary.
Since 2014, the agency has had an office and tables outside Franklin County Municipal Court’s Eviction Court, where people can come to them before seeing a magistrate and hopefully come to an agreement to catch up on their payments and stay in their home — or vacate the premises and avoid going through court proceedings at all.
Though proven to work, services like Community Mediation Services are often only well-funded by government agencies in times of crisis, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, said Deanna Pantín Parrish, who is on the faculty at Harvard Law School and studies landlord-tenant mediation.
And not having well-funded mediation services can have dire consequences, she said.
“Eviction mediation doesn’t just keep people housed, it keeps people alive,” Parrish said.
Eviction set outs where law enforcement officials remove a person's belongings from a rented residence and change their locks can result in violence, she said.
In March 2023, for example, a Cincinnati woman shot and killed three of her family members moments before deputies arrived at her house to serve her with eviction papers and remove them from their foreclosed home.
There have been more than 80 eviction-related deaths since July 2021, Parrish found while working to track media reports of violent outcomes of eviction with Princeton's Eviction Lab. More than 30 of them took place in 2023. Physical altercations also happen between tenants and landlords.
Evictions can additionally cause poverty, Parrish said.
Increases in homelessness and hospital visits and declines in financial health and credit scores result from evictions, according to a study by the Tobin Center for Economic Policy at Yale University. Evictions also remain on residents' records, making it difficult, if not impossible, to find new housing.
People who are evicted — disproportionately Black and Latino individuals — are more than 300% more likely to use an emergency shelter compared with those who have not been through the process, the study found. Eviction can also decrease people's annual earnings by nearly 15% over two years because they disrupt more than just housing, according to the study.
Evictions are at a 20-year high in Franklin County
Eviction filings hit at a 20-year high in Franklin County in 2023 at 23,921, and are expected to continue to rise this year, according to the Franklin County Municipal Court.
During an 18-year period, the Eviction Lab found that, on average, 3.6 million evictions had been filed every year since 2000 — that is, approximately nine evictions filed for every 100 households.
Tenants and landlords working with Community Mediation Services save time and money, with people often resolving their disputes within a day or two instead of the weeks, months and sometimes even years it can take through court, CMS Executive Director Shelley Whalen said.
Last year, CMS helped 1,900 tenants (a total of 4,448 household members) and reached an agreement in 97% of its cases, Whalen said.
A year after tenants worked with CMS, 86% of them had no subsequent evictions, she said.
How does mediation work?
When people facing eviction or who have been evicted approach mediation specialist Dana Comparetto, she explains what she does and what's involved in the mediation process.
"What we do is help anybody. Landlord or tenant," said Comparetto, who has worked for CMS for eight years. "A lot of people don't have anyone to help them."
Comparetto said she has seen a shift in the reasons tenants face evictions over the years.
"Before COVID, people had to bury a parent or use funds to divert it to something very important in life," she said. "Now, people are just trying to survive because everything is so expensive."
Comparetto said she has also seen rents steadily increase, pushing people in all kinds of situations, especially older adults, out of their homes more often than before.
Median rent in Columbus was at $1,298 per month in December, according to Yardi Matrix, a real estate service.
The key to being a mediator, Comparetto said, is staying impartial.
"There are always two sides to every story," she said. "We want the best outcome for both parties."
Mediation as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic
With federal and state eviction moratoriums in place during the COVID-19 pandemic, there were fears of large amounts of evictions happening as soon as they lifted.
Federal funding made available during the height of the pandemic helped develop new mediation programs and grow existing ones across the nation, Parrish said.
In 2022, there were at least 26 such programs in the country and at least 15 of them were formed as a direct response to the pandemic, she said.
Mediation programs can be more than a Band-Aid, Parrish said, they can also help prevent eviction.
But she and others worry about what happens to these programs when federal pandemic-related funding runs out.
"Eviction mediation programs come and go based on political will and sufficient funding," Parrish said. "For these programs to really bloom and do their necessary work, they need early and ongoing investment so that they can intervene in disputes in an early and ongoing way."
@DanaeKing
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus evictions: Will funding last for eviction meditation program?
