Kyle Nelson
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About Kyle
Nelson's research focuses on how laypeople navigate state bureaucracies tasked with implementing housing and homelessness policy. His dissertation explored these dynamics in LA County tenants' rights clinics and eviction courts, and his postdoctoral research extends this inquiry into how low-income Veterans access VA homelessness services. Nelson is also a staunch advocate for tenant protections and public data accessibility in LA as Senior Policy and Research Analyst at Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, a steering committee member with the Keep LA Housed Coalition, and a longtime member of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project-LA.
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Specifies a distinction between research on eviction's "individual life" and "institutional life." Unlike the former, the latter involves attending to the people, policies, and settings that shape the eviction processes in state bureaucracies and its outcomes in ways that provide policymakers with insights into how to craft eviction prevention interventions.
Draws on fieldwork and administrative records from Baltimore, Maryland; Dallas, Texas; Los Angeles, California; and Washington, DC— to identify how procedural and legal contexts differ by place, and the ways that these processes shape both eviction’s institutional life and its underlying social meanings. Identifies how the problem of eviction is no longer hidden in the housing literature, the explosion of eviction research has introduced a comparative analysis problem.
Discusses how the lack of sufficient affordable housing in Los Angeles, California burdens many renter households with the threat of an eviction. Mentions how research has identified individual- and neighborhood-level sociodemographic correlates of eviction, but the uneven distribution of sociodemographic characteristics and housing conditions across neighborhoods likely produces broader patterns of spatial clustering in eviction prevalence across local areas.
Analyzes California eviction court records for Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Diego Counties between 2005 and 2015. Finds that evictions are much more likely to occur in neighborhoods with higher poverty rates and/or shares of African‐American individuals than in neighborhoods with rising rent or income levels. States that court‐based evictions are much more likely to be found in areas with low‐income households and racial minorities than areas experiencing rapid neighborhood change.
Describes how eviction transforms landlords into plaintiffs and tenants into defendants, turning everyday troubles into legal problems. Explores as tenants navigate this transformation, they struggle to defend themselves in ways the legal system considers appropriate. Shows the legal system facilities "interpretive disjuncture," which why so many tenants in Los Angeles default, or lose their case before their first court date.