Nine years ago, Tulsa and Oklahoma City were ranked among the 20 cities in the United States with the highest eviction rates, 11th and 20th, respectively.
Nearly a decade later, eviction rates have risen across the state and country, but Tulsa has managed to reduce its rates to lower than those of Oklahoma City, thanks in part to the Landlord Tenant Resource Center, lawyers said. That inspired similar projects in Oklahoma City.
“That is beneficial because a lot of tenants don’t understand that they have a legal problem a lawyer can help them with or that free legal help is available,” said Eric Hallett, an eviction attorney for Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma. “Giving them that direct link to legal aid when they receive the summons has been important.”
Tulsa had an eviction rate of 7.77% at the time of the 2016 study, which was higher than Oklahoma City’s rate of 6.19%. Post-pandemic, eviction rates across the United States rose by 50%, and Oklahoma was not immune to that trend.
Tulsa County now has an eviction rate of nearly 13%; Oklahoma County’s is 14%. While the rising rates match the national trend, Tulsa County’s lower rates provide a blueprint for other counties.
Landlord Tenant Resource Center
The Landlord Tenant Resource Center is housed in Iron Gate, a food pantry and soup kitchen, and provides legal aid resources, tenant education tools and connects people to rental assistance resources.
The pro bono legal aid resources enable tenants, who are often underrepresented in court, to present their case to a lawyer and have the opportunity to be represented before a judge, rather than having to argue the case themselves.
The education programs enable tenants facing eviction to better understand the process, as well as the resources available to them, such as rental assistance.
Iron Gate is just across the street from Tulsa’s eviction court, providing easy access to resources for both landlords and tenants during the eviction process.
“We find that place-based initiatives are more successful,” Hallett said.
Hallett said that meeting people where they are and being available has allowed the center to connect more people with resources.
“Being nearly co-located and being able to access those services in real time has been really crucial,” said Katie Dilks, the executive director of Oklahoma Access to Justice Foundation.
In Oklahoma County, Neighborhood Services Organization is working to implement projects similar to the Landlord Tenant Resource Center.
“We have been consulting with organizations that helped with the implementation of the Landlord Tenant Resource Center for the last year to look at what Tulsa is doing that has been successful and what we can do in Oklahoma County,” said Jessica Earley, who oversees the Stay Housed Tenants Advocacy Center at Neighborhood Services Organization.
The Stay Housed Center is designed to prevent evictions.
One of the projects advocates in Oklahoma County are attempting to adopt would require a resource sheet to be distributed to tenants being evicted with their eviction notice.
Administrative Order
In 2021, the Tulsa County District Court issued an administrative order that required every eviction notice to be accompanied by a resource sheet provided by the Landlord Tenant Resource Center.
The sheet includes advertisements for legal aid, a QR code for a free bus pass to get to the court and information about available rental assistance.
“It encourages people to reach out and contact these resources ahead of time, in addition to encouraging people to actually come to court,” Dilks said.
If a tenant fails to appear in court, a default judgment is entered against them, resulting in eviction. Additionally, the landlord does not have to be present, as long as a representative is there.
Nationally, 4% of tenants have legal representation, compared to 83% of landlords. Legal Aid Services seeks to provide legal representation to tenants through the Landlord Tenant Resource Center.
“A big part of what we are trying to do here is continue those conversations,” Earley said. “Because there is a tremendous imbalance of power.”
Neighborhood Services and the Arnall Family Foundation send a flyer to Oklahoma County residents facing eviction, but it is not required to be attached to the eviction notice and typically arrives days after the notice, not allowing enough time for the tenant to access the resources.
“In our case, it goes out in the mail maybe one or two days after that eviction has been filed,” Earley said. “Therefore, sometimes it is not reaching people until their day of court or, unfortunately, after their hearing, because court is just so quick after (an eviction) is filed.”
Oklahoma’s eviction process is one of the fastest in the country, with the time between a summons and a hearing being only three days. By the time the resource sheet is sent to the tenant, the person could have already been evicted.
“The earlier you can intervene with a tenant, the more likely you are to have a successful outcome for them,” Hallet said.
Community Support
Developing a project like the Landlord Tenant Resource Center requires community support. Neighborhood Services is working to get courthouse and judicial support for projects like it in order to reduce the number of evictions in Oklahoma County and ultimately reduce the number of evictions in Oklahoma.
“We have a lot of out-of-state landlords and that is the hard thing,” Earley said. “They are not invested in our community. They are not seeing the outcomes of these evictions.”
In 2022, Oklahoma was third in the nation for corporations owning homes. That leads to many low-income renters being priced out.
A quarter of Oklahoma renters met the qualifications to be considered extremely low-income, earning less than 30% of the area’s median income, or about $30,000 for a 4-person household, which also contributes to the state’s eviction rates.
“There’s not a lot of legislative protections for tenants,” Earley said. “One of the things Tulsa has been able to do to move that needle is to get support from the community as a whole.”
