The Effect of Rent Control Status on Eviction Filing Rates: Causal Evidence From San Francisco

This paper presents causal evidence of a significant positive effect of rent control status on eviction filing rates in San Francisco, CA. Two publicly available data sets, of eviction notices (n = 21,806) and property tax records (n = 1,978,687), are combined using a regression discontinuity design to estimate a local average treatment effect of similar to 1.3% of evictions per residential unit per year conditioned on positive rent control status. Compared to the baseline rate of eviction notices over this same time period, the findings suggest that for a given tenant, positive rent control status (i.e., living in a rent-controlled unit) increases the likelihood of eviction by approximately 240% per year. This finding is best understood not as an inherent characteristic of rent control policy in general, but rather as the result of specific state-wide laws, passed in the years following the adoption of rent control in San Francisco, which granted rent-controlled property owners an economic incentive to evict and the legal means to do so.

Automated summary

This paper presents causal evidence of a significant positive effect of rent control status on eviction filing rates in San Francisco. The findings suggest that living in a rent-controlled unit increases the likelihood of eviction by approximately 240% per year. This is due to specific state-wide laws that granted rent-controlled property owners an incentive and legal means to evict tenants.