Session 21: The Geography of Eviction (Session 1)
Session Description
This week opens up the opportunity to discuss residential evictions within the context of policy analysis, particularly policy that is currently relevant to the question of ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and to questions of what recovery looks like.
The lab associated with this module focuses on eviction, but is designed to call upon you to act with more autonomy regarding how you pursue the lab content. We’ll break this up over two weeks and three sessions so that you have more time to excercise that autonomy:
- Tuesday 4/6/2021: Data setup and Descriptives
- Thursday 4/8/2021: Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis
- Tuesday 4/13/2021: Independent Work Day
- Thursday 4/15/2021: Communicating Results
For today’s class, we’ll start off by introducing the lab, and also by spending some time thinking about policy questions to ask from a mix of data on eviction rates and covid infection rates.
Come prepared with ideas for policy-relevant questions.
This Week’s Reflection Prompts
- What are our ethical responsibilities when analyzing information that is running in near real time? Are there different considerations for how we tell stories?
- What is the burden of proof for neighborhood level analyses of two disparate kinds of information (for instance, covid infection rates and eviction rates)? What do we need to show to establish validity of our argument or mixing of data? How might we validate our analysis with “on the ground” examples?
- How do we communicate effectively with non-technical audiences about near real time relationships in our data? What are some effective narrative vehicles or ways of storytelling that connect people to abstract concepts or information?
Before Class
Cunningham, Mary, Ananya Hariharan, and Olivia Fiol. 2021. The Looming Eviction Cliff. Urban Institute.
Hepburn, Peter, Renee Louis, and Matthew Desmond. 2020. Racial and Gender Disparities among Evicted Americans. Sociological Science 7: 649-662.
Other Resources
Layser, Michelle D., Andrew J. Greenlee, Edward W. De Barbieri, Tracy A. Kaye, and Blain G. Saito, IGPA Policy Spotlight: Mitigating Housing Instability During the Covid-19 Pandemic (March 30, 2021).
Layser, Michelle D. and De Barbieri, Edward and Greenlee, Andrew and Kaye, Tracy and Saito, Blaine G., Mitigating Housing Instability During a Pandemic (June 15, 2020).