Landlord-Tenant Mediation with Just Mediation Pittsburgh
Eviction is a social problem that impacts millions of residents nationwide every year, destabilizing families, altering the social fabric of communities, and disproportionately impacting low-income, non-white households. In Allegheny County alone, landlords file approximately 13,500 eviction lawsuits per year, jeopardizing housing for families facing an affordable housing shortage and a patterned pushout of Black Pittsburgh residents into more isolated areas of the County.
Facing this crisis, in 2020 Just Mediation Pittsburgh (JMP) and RentHelpPGH (RHP) were created as separate entities to address multiple components of the eviction crisis. JMP offers an alternative to eviction proceedings by providing landlord-tenant mediation services and RHP connect tenants and landlords with comprehensive resource navigation support. In 2021, our organizations partnered, recognizing the value each service provides to the populations the other was serving. This partnership has grown into a full-fledged collaborative mediation program that has prevented more than 1500 evictions in our community.
This success has been bolstered by JMP and RHP’s deep partnerships with longtime eviction prevention organizations, Neighborhood Legal Services and Community Justice Project. Together, along with Ebony Law and Pittsburgh Hispanic Development Corporation, we have built a strong collaborative working in unison to prevent or minimize the trauma and disruption caused by evictions and ensure that every tenant facing the threat of eviction has easy access to all available assistance to help them remain housed.
Landlord-Tenant Mediation is an example of the strength of inter-organization collaboration. Since July 2020 and as of August 2023, JMP has helped resolve more than 1500 disputes between landlords and tenants. Tenants get the benefit of consulting before and after a mediation with an attorney from Neighborhood Legal Services and when identified as necessary, more than 90% of the time, a resource navigator from RentHelpPGH.
Mediation saves the landlord and the courts time and money by allowing parties to seek resolution to their problems collaboratively. It is estimated that an eviction cost landlords more than $3000. These costs reflect court filing fees, lost rent, turning over the unit, and income lost waiting for a new tenant. In contrast, mediation in Allegheny County is a free service that has garnered landlords more than $1.3 MILLION in rental arrears between January and August of 2023 alone!
Public Housing Authority (PHA) tenants are both the most vulnerable to facing eviction proceedings (historically in Allegheny County, Public Housing Authorities and subsidized landlords represented almost 1/3 of the 13,500 evictions filed annually) and the most likely to face long term devastating consequences from those evictions. If evicted with a balance, PHA tenants are not eligible to live in any housing authority in the country for up to seven years if they carry an unpaid balance.
These consequences are why we are so grateful for our partnerships with Allegheny County Housing Authority and the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh. Their commitment to mediation has prevented the displacement of more than 640 Allegheny County families.