Eviction court is a strange, terrifying experience. It doesn't have to be
Bay Area // Justin Phillips
Betty Gabaldon was evicted from her home in Concord more than five years ago. She settled in Walnut Creek and has since dedicated her life to advocating for tenants rights, and ensuring renters understand the inner-workings of the eviction court system.
Santiago Mejia / The ChronicleShow MoreShow Less
Betty Gabaldon stands outside of the Contra Costa County courthouse in Martinez where, earlier this year, she monitored eviction hearings as part of the Eviction Court Watch program. The program was launched last year by four organizations that have worked to preserve stable and affordable housing for low-income residents of Contra Costa County, including the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy.
Betty Gabaldon holds flyers she passes to community members in Contra Costa County as part of her work as a tenants rights activist. Gabaldon was first drawn to the work back in 2017, when she organized a rent strike at her former Concord apartment complex.
To fight an unexpected $400 rent increase that would have priced her out of her Concord apartment in 2016, Betty Gabaldon led a rent strike with her neighbors. The rent hike never came. But when a new landlord took over the apartment complex the following year, Gabaldon was one of the first tenants to receive a 60-day eviction notice.
"It was a lot of chaos," she said. "I remember my daughter asking me if we were going to be homeless."
Gabaldon and her daughter moved out weeks before their scheduled eviction. Gabaldon wanted to avoid the stress of representing herself in eviction court.
I can't say I blame her.
A report published last month by the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, or EBASE, a local immigrant and tenants rights advocacy group, offers strong evidence that the deck is stacked against tenants in courtrooms.
The report focused on 56 unlawful detainer cases — or eviction lawsuits — that were resolved in Contra Costa Superior Court between May and mid-October 2022, a period that overlaps with the end of astatewide eviction moratorium in June.
It found that only 7% of tenants were represented by an attorney while 86% of landlords were represented by an attorney; 57% of tenants were women; and 41% of tenants were Black, even though Black people represent only 16% of renters in Contra Costa County.
More from Justin Phillips
$5 million for each longtime Black resident? S.F. has a bold reparations plan to consider
Six decades since the Fillmore's destruction, can other S.F. neighborhoods 'create a new future' for Black culture?
"Because local government in Contra Costa County does not ensure every tenant has a lawyer, landlords are 12 times more likely to have an attorney in court," said Alex Werth, the report's author and EBASE policy and research adviser. "Under what conception of fair justice and due process does that make sense?"
The Constitution does not extend the right to an attorney down to civil courts, where eviction cases are handled. And housing researchers, policy experts and advocates agree that only a fraction of evictions even end up in court, with most tenants choosing the route that Gabaldon did.
The courts are supposed to be the last stop where a tenant can get a fair shake. The data shows that isn't happening.
While the entire state saw drops in eviction filings from 2019 because of pandemic-related safeguards, a 2022 report by the Judicial Council of California shows the state disposed of 38,890 eviction lawsuits during the 2020-21 fiscal year.
Only 1,177 of cases — 3% — were dismissed.
While we don't know the final outcome of the remaining 97% of lawsuits, the odds don't bode well for tenants in a state where they often don't have attorneys and their landlords do.
This extends to Contra Costa County, which handled 728 eviction lawsuits in the 2021 fiscal year — second only to Santa Clara County in the region — and dismissed less than 3%.
The first California city to provide legal assistance to renters facing eviction was San Francisco in 2018. The benefits were almost immediately apparent, as the city's rate of eviction filings fell by 10% between 2018 and 2019; and 67% of individuals who received full representation kept their housing.
Four years later, San Francisco remains an outlier in its decision to help vulnerable renters, and 130,000 households in California are currently at risk of eviction, according to data from the Eviction Lab at Princeton University.
One key recommendation from the EBASE report is for Contra Costa County to create "a tenant right to counsel so that no low-income tenant is forced to face the eviction process alone," similar to what San Francisco has.
San Francisco allocated around $6.3 million per year between 2018 and 2020 for legal services, according to the Mayor's Office.
Gabaldon and her daughter were fortunate to find affordable housing in Walnut Creek, where they still live. Not everybody is so lucky, which is why Gabaldon has dedicated her life to tenants rights activism.
She also helped gather data for the EBASE report. I tagged along with her in December to sit in on eviction lawsuits in Pittsburg, a courthouse that in 2022 had a backlog of 800 unlawful detainer filings, according to county officials.
We witnessed one case. It involved three Black women who didn't have legal representation. Their landlord was present via Zoom, but his attorney was there in-person. The hearing lasted about 10 minutes, with the tenants and landlord's attorney meeting quietly in the hallway, before ending with the tenants telling the judge they would vacate the property.
As we left the courthouse, Gabaldon said to me: "Evictions, the whole process, it can turn your life upside down quick, especially when you don't have legal help."
Contra Costa County has a chance to ensure every tenant caught in the web of a complicated legal system does.
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Justin Phillips appears Sundays. Email: jphillips@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JustMrPhillips
Reach Justin on
Justin Phillips joined The San Francisco Chronicle in November 2016 as a food writer. He previously served as the City, Industry, and Gaming reporter for the American Press in Lake Charles, Louisiana. In 2019, Justin also began writing a weekly column for The Chronicle's Datebook section that focused on Black culture in the Bay Area. In 2020, Justin helped launch Extra Spicy, a food and culture podcast he co-hosts with restaurant critic Soleil Ho. Following its first season, the podcast was named one of the best podcasts in America by the Atlantic. In February, Justin left the food team to become a full-time columnist for The Chronicle. His columns focus on race and inequality in the Bay Area, while also placing a spotlight on the experiences of marginalized communities in the region.