More than 40% of Oklahoma County's eviction filings come from the same 100 properties.
A list of those buildings, along with other insights about evictions in Oklahoma's most populous county, is now being published on a regularly updated online platform.
The project is a collaboration between Mental Health Association Oklahoma, a nonprofit that offers low-income housing, mental health education and suicide prevention services and the Eviction Lab at Princeton University, which publishes similar data for more than 40 cities.
Amy Coldren, the Director of Advocacy and Communications at Mental Health Association Oklahoma, said the resource offers necessary insight into the factors that can lead someone to experience homelessness.
"If we, as providers, are invested in addressing homelessness and mental health outcomes, we really also have to be focused on eviction prevention," she said.
Coldren has been working at the nonprofit for a year, but her interest in tracking evictions goes much further back. In 2020, she was part of a public-private task force responsible for distributing emergency rental assistance to individuals financially impacted by the pandemic.
Spending time at the Oklahoma County Courthouse opened her eyes, Coldren said. It spurred her desire to increase transparency in the eviction process so that others could see what thousands of Oklahoma families go through each year.
"The speed in which a tenant could be evicted from their home; it just is insurmountable," she said.
Oklahoma has one of the shortest eviction timelines in the country. Despite some lawmakers' efforts to slow the process, hearings must be scheduled within 10 days of an eviction being filed, including weekends and holidays. Furthermore, state law only requires tenants to be notified of a hearing three days in advance.
Coldren said that gives renters very little time to prepare for court, let alone arrange future housing accommodations. Evictions can be extremely destabilizing, Cauldron said, but evidence shows landlords in Oklahoma are likely to file even after just one month of missed rent.
In the last year, 50% of eviction filings were for less than the median monthly rent collected in all county eviction claims. 37% of filings were for less than $1,000.
"For a family that's facing an uncertain financial setback — an unexpected medical need, job loss, you know, any type of unexpected financial setback — they can then be pushed into what is a crisis very, very quickly," Coldren said.
Meanwhile, landlords only need to pay $58 to file claims up to $5,000.
Taking a look at landlords who repeatedly file evictions against their renters can reveal which companies make it part of their business practice, Coldren said. Even if the case is dismissed before the first court hearing because the tenant finds a way to pay the bill, they could be saddled with attorney fees, filing fees or other legal costs associated with evictions.
Coldren said the partnership with the Eviction Lab is important because it gives Oklahomans a way to easily compare the county's stats with those of other municipalities. Eviction data is public record, but it takes a long time to sort through and make sense of the thousands of individual cases.
"We can wave our red flag and, you know, say that there's a need for reform, there's a need for change," she said. "But I think when you can compare it to other similar cities or other states, it really, it's an eye-opening experience."
Landlords in Oklahoma County filed for more than 17,000 evictions in the last 12 months, a figure roughly equivalent to the total filings across the entire state of Connecticut. The city's eviction filing rate stands at 12%, meaning that there are around 12 filings per 100 renter households. That is more than twice the rate in New York City, Philadelphia and Austin, Texas.
This report was produced by the Oklahoma Public Media Exchange, a collaboration of public media organizations. Help support collaborative journalism by donating at the link at the top of this webpage.
