UT Team Studies Legal Aid in Knox County Evictions
The Russell Sage Foundation (RSF) has awarded UT’s Appalachian Justice Research Center (AJRC) a $74,800 grant to support its study of a legal aid program for tenants facing evictions in Knox County.
Amid rising rents and evictions, Knox County increased the availability of counsel at various stages of the eviction process in late 2023, through federal funding and a partnership with Legal Aid of East Tennessee (LAET). The AJRC at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is examining the effectiveness of that program, which is set to expire in May 2025.
The work at UT is led by principal investigator Stephanie Casey Pierce, an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science; Associate Professor Solange Muñoz in the Department of Geography and Sustainability; and Law Professor Wendy A. Bach, co-director of the AJRC.
During the fall 2024 semester, Muñoz and 10 UT students in the AJRC lab course began preliminary research on the program, working closely with LAET and the community organization Statewide Organizing for Community eMpowerment (SOCM).
“The lab has provided a good foundation for understanding the program within a more localized political, economic, and social context,” Muñoz said.
More than half of renters nationally and in the Knoxville area are rent-burdened, spending more than 30% of their income on housing, and evictions have been on the rise. In the Knoxville metropolitan area, rents rose 34% between 2019 and 2023, and one out of four renters spent more than half their gross monthly income on housing in 2023. Now about 250 evictions are being filed in Knox County every month.
“About 1 out of every 23 renter households in Knox County received an eviction notice this year,” Pierce said in late 2024, noting that funding through the federal Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) program allowed Legal Aid to double its capacity, from representing about 10% of renters in eviction court to about 20%.
Through the AJRC-affiliated study, UT students majoring in fields such as political science, sociology, business, global studies, and leadership policy are gaining experience ranging from data collection and analysis to interning with the legal aid group.
“This grant will support three additional undergraduate researchers from political science and geography to assist with data collection, analysis, and coding for the quantitative, qualitative, and survey portions of the research,” Pierce said.
Research Focus
Analyzing data from Knox County courts and LAET, the researchers will determine whether expanded access to legal services improves tenant outcomes across multiple measures, from displacement to monetary judgments.
“Although there is a growing national trend to expand access to legal services for tenants facing eviction, there is little research investigating the implementation or impact of such policies on tenant outcomes,” Pierce explained. “We further analyze whether there is any variation in tenant outcomes across race, gender, household type, unit type, income, subsidy, and geographic location.”
In partnership with SOCM, they will conduct in-court observations and interview tenants, judges, and lawyers to further study the program and its implementation.
The research team hopes to have preliminary results from its work before May.
The researchers will delve into underexplored areas related to housing policy, legal access, policy implementation, and critical geography. Pierce said it will provide practical insights for local jurisdictions considering expanded access to counsel policies.
Few studies have investigated the implementation or impact of such policies on tenant outcomes, and this will be the first to focus on a mid-sized, urban county in the South.
Previous research, which focused on policies in northeastern states, found that expanded access to legal services can save local governments money in areas such as homeless shelters, chronic absenteeism in public schools, Medicaid spending, foster care, and juvenile justice, she said. A 2023 study found benefits for tenants including less stress and more time to move.
“Our study builds upon this previous work to examine both overall program and individual tenant outcomes, as well as investigating how renter-attorney interactions moderate the effectiveness of legal representation, and, therefore, overall program implementation,” Pierce said.
Bach noted that Tennessee’s housing law differs substantially from other states. “Studying a jurisdiction that is significantly less rights-protective is crucial to understanding the strength of policies like enhanced access to legal counsel in different geographic, political, economic, normative, and cultural systems,” she said.
By Amy Beth Miller