By Andrea Palumbo

Book Review of Fran Quigley, Lessons from Eviction Court: How We Can End Our Housing Crisis (Cornell University Press, 2025)

Housing court is a sad place. Equal justice under the law is a fiction here: landlords have the money, so they have the power. Tenants often have neither and a lot more at stake if they lose their case.

In a typical year in the United States, landlords file around a million eviction cases. In Minnesota, where I’m writing from, an average of 48 eviction cases are filed per day. In Indiana, where Fran Quigley teaches law, around 200 cases are filed each day. In both states, a disproportionate share of tenants facing eviction are women and people of color. (See Note #1)

There are no public defenders in housing court and nowhere near enough Legal Aid attorneys to represent the low- and middle-income families who need help. Student clinics like the one Quigley directs at the McKinney School of Law at Indiana University do their best to fill the gap. These are invaluable because they give law students courtroom experience they would never have in a classroom and provide some help to tenants. Students work with real people and quickly find out how high the stakes are. Unfortunately, they also learn how to give people bad news. Tenants usually don’t win eviction cases–often the best they can hope for is to minimize the damage.

At the time that Lessons was written, I worked for HOME Line, a tenant advocacy organization in Minnesota. [Full disclosure: I’m quoted in the book.] HOME Line runs a statewide tenant hotline, and as a hotline attorney, I advised tenants every day about multiple landlord/tenant issues, including lease terms and rent increases.

In Minneapolis, most residential tenants have term leases, which means they have a start and end date. A few things can happen at the end of the lease. One is that the tenant voluntarily moves out. This is the best case scenario because the tenant is moving out on their own terms.

Another scenario is that the landlord and tenant renew the lease.The tenant continues to live in the unit, but almost always pays more for rent. With very limited exceptions, there is no rent control in Minnesota, so there’s no limit on how much the landlord can charge the tenant. If a building is in a hot area for development, a landlord can raise the rent as high as the “market” will bear… If the tenant can’t afford the higher rent, they’re out. When the rental market gets tight, rents go up, so it can be really hard to find a more affordable place. (See Note #2)

The third option is that the landlord decides not to renew the lease and makes the tenant move out. Landlords can do this for any non-discriminatory reason, so the power is again in the landlord’s hands. A family’s stability could hinge on the whims of a landlord.

While at HOME Line, I spoke to a lot of panicking tenants whose landlords didn’t renew their leases. Landlords are legally required to give advance notice that they aren’t renewing the lease, but tenants are still shocked that they have to move out in a month or two. Tenants who don’t move out by the deadline imposed by the landlord are in danger of being evicted. Having an eviction case on record, especially a recent case, makes finding a new place next to impossible.

Quigley shows us that there are alternatives.

Vienna, Austria, offers a sharp contrast to Minneapolis and most other cities in the United States. Vienna doesn’t consider housing as solely a commodity; it sees it as a human right. Everyone has to live somewhere. The city has made significant investments in subsidized housing and rent control policies. Tenants pay a percentage of their income for rent, and if their income increases, instead of having to move out, the amount they pay for rent increases. Tenants also have unlimited lease tenures, and many stay in their homes for a long time. They, and their communities, have greater stability.

Quigley also discusses how several faith traditions share the belief that housing is a human right and that we have a moral responsibility to ensure that people have shelter. Interviews with practitioners of different faiths–Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism–illustrate the common denominators of their beliefs. Working for justice and alleviating suffering directs and furthers their work.

As Lessons describes, the U. S. housing and eviction crisis is the result of years of good intentions left by the wayside. Investment in public housing resources gave way to tax breaks for rich landlords and developers. Racial disparities in renting and home ownership from the 1930s and earlier continue to this day. The most important lesson for us is that the eviction crisis can be reversed. Housing justice is possible, and there is a role for all of us–tenants, union members, people of faith–to bring it about.

Note #1: The number of eviction case filings dropped dramatically during the height of the COVID pandemic but is now on the increase due to the end of tenant protections against evictions and rent assistance. Statistics for states, counties, and some cities are available at The Eviction Lab, an invaluable resource created by Matthew Desmond, the author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City.

Note #2: This assumes that a tenant has a decent rental history. The larger, corporate landlords screen potential tenants’ rental history, criminal records, and credit history, so if someone has a less than perfect background, they’ll have a hard time finding a new place.

Andrea Palumbo is an attorney in Minneapolis, Minnesota and a member of the Twin Cities DSA.

Image credits: Realtor.com; Cornell University Press