Publications

Leung, Lillian, Peter Hepburn, and Matthew Desmond. "Serial eviction filing: Civil courts, property management, and the threat of displacement." Social Forces 100, no. 1 (2021): 316-344.

Analyzing over 8 million court records, I discovered and documented serial eviction filings, a phenomenon in which landlords repeatedly file evictions against the same household at the same address. In-depth interviews with property managers and landlords in South Carolina and Alabama show how they leverage eviction courts to extract monetary sanctions, thus exacerbating tenants’ housing cost burden and compromising their ability to find future housing even without displacement.

• Featured by the Post and Courier

• Provided written and oral testimony to the Maryland State Senate

• Blog poston the Eviction Lab website

Gromis, Ashley, Ian Fellows, James R. Hendrickson, Lavar Edmonds, Lillian Leung, Adam Porton, and Matthew Desmond. "Estimating eviction prevalence across the United States." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119, no. 21 (2022): e2116169119.

With the team at Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, I develop the first nationwide database of eviction records using millions of eviction court records from across the country. We show 2.7 million households face the threat of eviction each year. We further show state-level housing policies are strongly associated with county-level eviction filing risk.

• Recipient of the 2023 ASA Publication Award for Significant Contributions to Applied and Public Sociology

Leung, Lillian, Peter Hepburn, James Hendrickson, and Matthew Desmond. “No safe harbor: Eviction filing in public housing” Social Service Review, 97(3), 456-497.

Linking eviction records with public housing address data, we demonstrate that those living in public housing face equal risk of receiving eviction filings and higher risk of serial eviction filing. I conducted in-depth interviews with staff in public housing authorities. We show PHAs respond to local eviction policies in ways that resemble their private market counterparts and use the courts to facilitate rent collection in jurisdictions that encourage the practice.

• Featured by Vice

• Blog post on the Eviction Lab website

Works in Progress

• Robinson III, John and Lillian Leung. “From Persuasion to Evasion: Anti-Collective Action and the Making of Affordable Housing in Suburban Chicago.” Forthcoming. Social Forces.

• Leung, Lillian, Renee Louis, Jasmine Rangel, and Matthew Desmond. “Profit or Protection? Evictions and housing dynamics in immigrant neighborhoods.” Revise and Resubmit.

• Leung, Lillian. “Dynamics of Rental Housing Affordability in the Immigrant and US-born Population, 2000-2020.” Revise and Resubmit.