The Housing Instability Crisis
The numbers
- 50% of tenants default on rent at some point — NBER Working Paper No. 33155 (2024)
- For tenants without rent subsidies, total rent payments are only 86% of rent due — a loss rate exceeding US credit cards, mortgages, and high-risk bonds
- Landlords already informally forbear 2-3 months before filing eviction — Agape formalizes and documents what the industry already does informally, at lower cost and with better outcomes
- National eviction filing rate runs at 5-6% of renter households annually — higher in distressed workforce housing markets at 8-10%
- Lower-income, non-white, and female-headed households with children face eviction disproportionately and precisely when most economically vulnerable — Stanford/SIEPR research (Humphries et al. 2024)
Most landlords focus on court filing fees while ignoring the larger downstream losses. The full cost per eviction:
The True Cost of Eviction
- Legal fees and attorney costs — $500 to $5,000
- Lost rent during proceedings (2-3 months) — $2,200 to $3,300
- Property turnover and re-leasing — $1,750 to $4,000
- Staff administrative time — $200 to $600
- Court filing and service fees — $100 to $750
- Total average eviction cost — $3,500 to $10,000 per event
The eviction that costs $6,750 to execute was almost never inevitable. It was the outcome of a modest annual per-unit investment that nobody made.
The true cost of eviction is rarely what landlords expect. Legal fees, court costs, lost rent during proceedings, property turnover, and re-leasing expenses combine to a documented range of $3,500 to $10,000 per eviction event — against a one-month rent loss of $750 to $1,000. The math is not close. The eviction that costs $6,750 to execute was almost never inevitable. It was the outcome of a modest per-unit investment in tenant stability that nobody made. Agape exists to make that investment — and to prove it pays.
What Eviction Does to Families
- Eviction judgment causes measurable reductions in income and credit access — Stanford/Collinson et al. (2024)
- Increases homeless shelter stays and emergency room visits following eviction
- Households face increased financial distress in the year leading up to eviction — not just after
- 92% of households receiving structured legal and financial assistance see measurable benefits — HUD Eviction Protection Grant Program
- Applications for eviction protection assistance increased 91% from 2021 to 2024 — confirming scale of unmet need
The School Conversion Advantage
- Single-family property TSP fund: capitalized at $900 (one month rent), covers one tenant — one emergency draw depletes the fund entirely
- 15-unit school conversion TSP fund: capitalized at $11,250, covers 12 simultaneous maximum draws before depletion
- Expected annual draws at a 15-unit building at 4% default rate: less than one per year — fund is structurally robust
- Renovation cost advantage: 58% lower cost per unit than single-family acquisition after Historic Tax Credits applied
- Combined Historic Tax Credit available on qualifying school buildings: 45% (20% federal plus 25% West Virginia state)
- At 10 school conversions (150 units): interest earned on combined reserve funds exceeds expected annual draws — program becomes a net contributor to operating income
- At 3.75% APY on a 150-unit portfolio reserve fund of $337,500: $12,656 annual interest against $5,625 expected annual draws — net positive $7,031 per year
What the numbers and research tell us.
The case for investing in housing stability is not built on compassion alone — it is built on data. The research is clear, the numbers are compelling, and the cost of inaction is documented. What follows is the evidence base that drives every decision Agape Community Works Foundation makes.
The Gravity Payments Parallel
Investing in Stability Pays
In 2015 Dan Price of Seattle-based Gravity Payments set a $70,000 minimum salary for all employees. The decision was widely criticized. The results demonstrated the core principle that underlies the Tenant Stability Program — that investing in the financial stability of people in your operational ecosystem generates measurable returns:
- Employee turnover cut in half
- Company grew significantly
- The return on a 2% raise: 4,299% ROI when employee retention value is calculated
- The return on a 5% raise: 1,661% ROI
- The return on a 10% raise: 780% ROI
- Break-even point where a raise stops paying for itself requires an 88% increase — no realistic wage increase falls in that range
- The policy outlasted its founder and remains in place today under current CEO Tammi Kroll
The causal mechanism is identical to the Tenant Stability Program — absorb a short-term cost to invest in the financial stability of people in your operational ecosystem, generate returns through reduced churn, lower administrative burden, and improved relationship quality.
International Evidence
Housing Stability Investment Works
- Finland — Housing First (PAAVO program) — the only European country where homelessness decreased in recent years. 88% retention rate in stable accommodation. Savings of €15,000 to €52,000 per person per year in shelter, healthcare, justice, and social services
- Helsinki — single Housing First program analysis generated €250,000 in savings in one year
- New York City — Pathways to Housing — $16,282 saved per unit per year in public costs, offsetting nearly all of the $17,277 provision cost
- United Kingdom — nine Housing First projects evaluated showed consistent potential to reduce homelessness while generating significant cost savings to government and public services
- Italy, Sweden, Spain, Denmark — Housing First replicated across multiple national contexts with consistent results: housing stability investment generates returns exceeding the investment in every context tested
HUD Benchmarks Agape Measures Against
- HUD Public Housing Assessment System standard for well-managed affordable housing: 96%+ occupancy
- Agape properties benchmarked against county-level HUD Fair Market Rent data — not national averages
- Rents set within the 25th to 75th percentile of HUD FMR data for each county, updated annually
- 50th percentile used as the planning midpoint for financial modeling
The Logical Structure
The Tenant Stability Program is not a novel theory. It applies a documented economic principle across three independently validated tiers:
- Employment economics — validated by Gravity Payments and SHRM/Gallup research
- US housing research — validated by NBER, Stanford, and HUD
- International housing stability programs — validated by Finland, UK, and US Housing First initiatives
Agape Community Works generates the housing-sector data at the workforce rental level that currently does not exist — and makes it available to researchers, policymakers, and operators nationwide.