6 Ideas for Preventing Evictions in a Post-COVID World

In the years since COVID-19 hit North Texas, United Way of Metropolitan Dallas has worked with civic, corporate and community partners to provide support to our neighbors facing the threat of eviction. However, now that the worst of the pandemic is behind us and federal eviction protections have expired, the rate of evictions is once again on the rise.

Eviction prevention is a key component of our work to prevent homelessness and encourage financial stability. We recognize that a stable home environment is foundational to our three focus areas—education, income and health. That’s because without a safe, comfortable place to live, children are less likely to succeed in school, adults often struggle to maintain steady work and families face greater threats to their physical and mental health.

Through the Dallas Rental Assistance Collaborative, the Targeted Eviction Prevention Program, advocacy work and other initiatives, United Way brought the community together to support thousands of families through the height of the pandemic, helping to prevent an eviction crisis in our communities.

As we look ahead, it’s important that our community unites once again to encourage housing stability on an ongoing basis. Working with other members of the Dallas-Area Eviction Prevention Task Force, our team has developed a set of recommendations for ongoing eviction prevention efforts across North Texas.

Our Recommendations for Preventing Evictions

In a new report, “Recommendations for a Permanent Eviction Prevention Infrastructure,” United Way and our partners detail a series of steps that our community can take to ensure more families can stay in their homes.

The recommendations cover several high-level elements of eviction prevention, including:

• Give tenants opportunities to access rent relief.
• Provide legal aid to tenants facing eviction cases.
• Ensure tenants can easily access eviction navigation and other resources.
• Improve data gathering and sharing to infuse more transparency in the eviction process.
• Adjust eviction policies to give renters an “opportunity to cure” back-rent and to protect tenants who have resolved an eviction case.
• Create a tenant education program to ensure renters know their rights.

In the full report, we explore how to best achieve these goals and which agencies would need to be involved.

Of course, making these recommendations a reality would take time and community-wide buy-in. However, we saw during COVID that eviction prevention measures such as these have a profound impact on people’s lives, enabling children to stay in their schools, empowering parents to maintain steady work and creating a more stable, healthier environment for all.

Read the Full Report

Click below to read the report with our full recommendations for sustaining a local eviction prevention infrastructure to minimize housing instability and prevent homelessness:

Download “Recommendations for a Permanent Eviction Prevention Infrastructure.”