Methodology

Methodology

In the analysis, The Coming Wave of COVID-19 Evictions: A Growing Crisis for Families in Marin County, we estimate the number of renter households in Marin County at risk of eviction in the absence of protective eviction moratoria. Our analysis estimates the number of renter households in which workers have lost their jobs and have experienced one or more spells of unemployment with no replacement income during the pandemic, as well as the estimated number of children in those households. This is an estimate of those most at risk; many other households that have experienced income losses or declines could also face eviction without strong renter protections. Below are the methods and data sources used for estimating these numbers. In the below headings and in the fact sheet we round our estimates of households to the nearest hundred.

4,700 Renter Households at High Risk of Eviction

To produce this estimate, we estimate the number of workers that have been unemployed at some point during the pandemic with no replacement income, and then estimate how many of those workers live in renter households. 

We first determine the number of unemployed workers using data from the California Employment Development Department on the number of unique workers that filed initial unemployment insurance (UI) claims between March 21, 2020  (the start of the COVID-19 crisis) through November 28, 2020 (the most recent data available at the time of this analysis). This is 40,505 workers in Marin County. To estimate the number of those filers who receive benefits, we use data from The Century Foundation’s Unemployment Insurance Data Explorer which indicates that 84.5 percent of filers in California between April 1, 2020 and September 30, 2020 were approved to receive benefits, making for 34,229 unemployed workers in Marin County who received unemployment insurance at some point during the pandemic.

This number understates the true number of recently unemployed workers because not all of the recently unemployed file for unemployment insurance. Workers might not apply because they are ineligible for benefits or they assume ineligibility based on hours worked. Undocumented workers, for example, account for approximately 13 percent of the labor force in Los Angeles County, and while this estimate of the labor force is not available for Marin County, we know there are an estimated 14,000 undocumented residents in Marin County. Other workers attempt to apply for unemployment but face difficulties doing so. 

To estimate the total number of unemployed workers including those who did not file for benefits, we divide our number of Marin County unemployed workers receiving UI by the estimated rate of unemployed workers receiving UI (the UI recipiency rate) in California of 52.3 percent. This recipiency rate was calculated by the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank using data from the Census Household Pulse survey in their report Household Rental Debt During Covid-19. Based on this calculation, 65,448 Marin County workers experienced unemployment during the pandemic. When we subtract the number who received UI benefits from this number, we arrive at 31,219 workers who experienced unemployment at some point during the pandemic but did not receive benefits so had no replacement income.

To understand how many of these workers are renters at high risk of eviction, we need to estimate how many of them live in rental housing. Four in 10 housing units in Marin County are rental units according to 2018 5-Year American Community Survey data, but it is likely that the share of newly unemployed workers that are renters is higher given that Latinx and immigrant workers have higher rentership rates. To estimate the rentership rate of the newly unemployed, we looked at the rentership rates of adult workers in the lower two-thirds of the earnings distribution in industries with a disproportionate share of recent UI claims, based on California Policy Lab reports, using 2018 5-Year American Community Survey microdata from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS USA) data. Since the California Policy Lab only reports UI claims numbers by industries for the 20 largest counties in California, we estimated the top 5 industries with the highest UI claims averaged over March 15 - May 9, 2020 and June 7 - June 20, 2020 across the seven Bay Area counties - Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, San Mateo, San Francisco, Solano, and Sonoma. The top 5 industries for the available Bay Area counties were used as a proxy for the top 5 industries in Marin County. This includes the following industries: accommodation and food service, retail trade, health care and social assistance, construction, administrative support and waste management/remediation. In 2018, 55.06 percent of Marin County workers in these industries were renters so we use that multiplier to estimate that 17,189 of the newly unemployed workers with no replacement income are renters.

We estimate the distribution of these 17,189 workers into renter households based on the composition of renter households from the 2018 IPUMS data. In Marin County, among renters in the universe of lower-earning adult renters in industries with high UI claims used above, 23.6 percent are in households with one employed adult, 40.2 percent are in households with two employed adults, and 36.1 percent are in households with three or more employed adults. Applying the share of workers by household composition to the newly unemployed renters with no replacement income, we estimate that 4,062 live in single-worker households, 6,914 live in households with two employed adults, and 6,213 live in households with three or more employed adults.

We consider all of the one-worker renter households at high risk of eviction since they experienced a spell of unemployment with no replacement income and very likely have little to no savings. But for the unemployed workers with no replacement income living with other workers, we need to determine how many live in households where the other adults also are unemployed with no replacement income. For renter households with two employed adults, our estimates suggest there are 6,914 newly unemployed adults with no replacement income out of a total 22,416  employed adults — or 30.8 percent. Assuming that the newly unemployed with no replacement income are randomly distributed across these households, it follows that about 9.51 percent of them, on average, would share the same household. The result is an estimated  658 renter households with two adult workers, both unemployed with no replacement income. For the three or more working adult households, the odds all working adults would be newly unemployed with no replacement income gets very small so we assume it to be zero.

Adding the one- and two-worker households together there are 4,720 Marin County renter households with no adult who is employed or with replacement income to pay rent and are therefore at high risk of eviction. Note that in our estimation methodology, to be conservative, we assume that the workers who lose their jobs and have no replacement income and live with other working adults are not at high risk of eviction because the adults with income will continue to pay rent so as not to be evicted, even if it causes debt or financial hardship.

Lastly, we estimate the number of children in these at-risk households by multiplying by the average number of children in renter households with one or two employed adult workers in Marin County, among the same universe of lower-earning adult renters in industries with high UI claims used above (about 0.65 and 0.86, respectively), and summing the result to get 3,196 children in households at risk of eviction.

It is important to note that this analysis assumes that workers who experience a spell of unemployment with no replacement income at any point in the pandemic are at risk of eviction, even if they were reemployed. We make this assumption because we do not have further data to accurately assess household finances and because these workers could have accumulated rent debt during their spell of unemployment. Our focus solely on workers with no replacement income during one or more spells of unemployment makes this a conservative estimate, since most workers who have been receiving unemployment benefits are earning far less income than they were when they were employed.

Additional Analyses

  • Homeless population by race/ethnicity: Marin County homeless population share by race/ethnicity from the HUD 2019 Continuum of Care Homeless Assistance Programs point-in-time report and county population share from the 2018 5-Year American Community Survey (which represents a 2014-2018 average). We adjusted the homelessness data to create mutually exclusive racial/ethnic categories by assuming the non-Hispanic share of each racial group among those experiencing homelessness is the same as the non-Hispanic share of each racial group among the overall population.
  • Tenants with no or slight confidence in ability to pay next month's rent by race/ethnicity: Bay Area Equity Atlas analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey on tenants with no or slight confidence in ability to pay next month's rent (Table 2b). The data reflects average responses across three surveys: November 11 - November 23; November 25 - December 7; and December 9 - December 21. The geography is the San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA Metro Area.
  • Housing instability map: Urban Institute’s 2018 Emergency Rental Assistance Priority Index estimates the level of need in a census tract by measuring the prevalence of low-income renters who are at risk of experiencing housing instability and homelessness. The index examines neighborhood conditions and demographics, incorporating instability risk factors before the pandemic as well as the pandemic’s economic impact. The map shows how rental assistance need compares with all other tracts in the state.
  • Change in employment rates by wage level: Opportunity Insights Economic Tracker data on the change in employment rates (unadjusted) between January 4-31 (indexed) and October 22, 2020 for Marin County.
  • Rent burdens (total and economically insecure renters by race/ethnicity and nativity): PolicyLink/ERI analysis of 2018 5-Year American Community Survey Integrated Public Use Microdata Series. Rent-burdened is defined as spending more than 30 percent of income on housing costs. Data for 2018 represents a 2014-2018 average. Household income is based on the year prior to the survey while housing costs are based on the survey year. Data by race are determined by the race of the household head and are only reported if the sample size is sufficient. Economic insecurity is defined as below 350 percent of the federal poverty line, or about $87,000 for a family of four or $44,000 for a single individual. Latinos include people of Hispanic origin of any race and all other racial/ethnic  groups exclude people of Hispanic origin.  Immigrants are not mutually exclusive with the racial/ethnic categories.