The Benefits and Limitations of Tenant Rights Education: A Case Study of Eviction Prevention Workshops in San Diego, California

Abstract

This study demonstrates the value, and limitations, of an educational workshop which aimed to reduce residential displacement by educating low-income tenants about their rights. We show that The Eviction Prevention Workshop had a strong positive effect on participants’ understanding of their rights and awareness of available legal resources and mixed effects on tenants’ self-reported stress. We argue that capacity-building programming should be part of displacement prevention efforts because it improves tenants’ understanding of legal processes, knowledge of how to respond to housing crises, and what resources to pursue, and communicates this information upstream from crises that lead to housing loss. Because low-income tenants’ rights are very limited, information about tenant empowerment through advocacy is a critical part of the intervention. Successful tenant education programs should model the outreach approach used for the Eviction Prevention Workshop, which relied on trusted community-based organizations to register members of highly disadvantaged communities. Encouraging attendance at the workshops was a challenge, and we suggest ways it could be increased.