Evictions and Psychiatric Treatment

Stable housing is critical for health, employment, education, and other social outcomes. Evictions reflect a form of housing instability that is experienced by millions of Americans each year. Inadequately treated psychiatric disorders have the potential to influence evictions in several ways. For example, these disorders may impede labor market performance and thus the ability to pay rent, or increase the likelihood of risky and/or nuisance behaviors that can lead to a lease violation. We estimate the effect of local access to psychiatric treatment on eviction rates. We combine data on the number of psychiatric treatment centers that offer outpatient and residential care within a county with eviction rates in a two-way fixed-effects framework. Our findings imply that ten additional psychiatric treatment centers in a county lead to a reduction of 2.1% in the eviction rate.