Data preparation
We collect, clean, and standardize eviction records for the courts, agencies, and organizations that hold them but do not have the staff or tools to turn them into usable data.
About
Making eviction understandable.
The Eviction Research Network collects eviction court records across the United States and turns them into maps, state profiles, and trend data that anyone can read. We are a research program at UC Berkeley, founded in 2018, and we work with courts, legal aid organizations, public agencies, advocates, and universities to show where evictions happen, who they fall on, and how they change over time.
Mission
Where the work began.
The network began with one case in King County, Washington. A mother was served an eviction notice, settled out of court, and stayed in her home for two more years. The filing stayed on her record and was later used to deny her housing. With support from the American Civil Liberties Union, her case raised a larger question about who faces eviction and how those cases are recorded.
Research in King County found that Black households were four times more likely than White households to receive an eviction notice, and that Black women were five times more likely than White men to have an eviction case filed against them. Tim Thomas, who founded ERN, led that research and extended it across Washington State and then to other states. The findings informed Washington's 2019 extension of the eviction notice period from 3 to 14 days and Baltimore City's right to counsel for tenants facing eviction.
The same patterns appear in state after state, and they follow lines drawn by earlier housing policy, including redlining. Because a stable home shapes health, schooling, and work, eviction reaches well beyond the courtroom. ERN exists to make those patterns visible. We collect court records, standardize them, and publish maps and trends that show where evictions are concentrated, who they fall on, and how they change over time, so that tenants, advocates, agencies, and researchers can see the problem in their own communities and act on it.
What we do
What we do.
We collect, analyze, and map eviction data, and we help courts, agencies, and partner organizations do the same with theirs.
Maps and analysis
We measure filing and judgment rates by neighborhood and by race and sex, and publish the results as state profiles, interactive maps, and trend charts that a reader without a statistics background can follow.
Network
We work alongside courts, legal aid organizations, agencies, advocates, and universities, helping partners understand their own data and sharing our methods and code so that findings can be checked, repeated, and extended.
Advocacy
We bring the evidence to legislators, agencies, and courts, and we advise on policies that reduce preventable evictions and their disproportionate impact on vulnerable communities.
The team
Eviction Research Network.
Network
Research Collaborators.
Alumni
Student Alumni.
Graduate and undergraduate researchers who have contributed to ERN projects.
- Kasey Zapatka, Ph.D.
- Pia Deshpande
- Ángel Mendiola Ross
- Alex Ramiller, Ph.D.
- HC Moore
- Violet Davis
- Miller Jacquet
- Riya Rupen Patwa
- Pedro Ochoa Navarrete
- Jennifer Chen
- Ian Kennedy, Ph.D.
- Anisha Keshavan, Ph.D.
- Yohan Min, Ph.D.
- Max McDonald
- Lucero Mejia
- Avery Richards, Ph.D.
- Amit Cohen
- Ashley Santos
- Emely Ramirez
- Aniket Rahane
Academic home
A research program in the Department of Sociology.
The Eviction Research Network is a research program led by Dr. Tim Thomas, Assistant Researcher in the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology, which serves as its academic home. ERN is not a separate legal entity or a separate campus unit; its externally funded research is administered through the University.
Partners
Organizational Collaborators.
Support
Research Funders.
Partner with ERN
Working on eviction where the data is thin?
We collect and analyze court records, build data pipelines, train collaborators, and co-author research with courts, legal aid organizations, agencies, advocates, and universities. If you have records no one has analyzed, or need help with the ones you have, get in touch.