Research

My research seeks to describe patterns of inequality and understand the mechanisms that perpetuate and produce those outcomes, with a focus on the rental housing market. More broadly, I aim to build tools and make data assessible to broaden our collective understanding of inequality and informs social policies that address social disparities.

One line of inquiry draws on large administrative datasets to document the uneven spatial distribution of evictions in the United States across states. I leverage comparisons between places with different housing laws and court systems to show how privileged groups leverage the legal system to exacerbate disadvantage. Another area of my research investigates how intermediaries in subsidized housing programs interpret and interact with housing laws and policies to reify existing disparities.

In a separate thread, my dissertation focuses on the intersection between immigration and housing. I highlight the rental housing affordability as an understudied dimension of immigrant integration by presenting a comprehensive profile of immigrant rental affordability dynamics between 2000 and 2020. I am also interested in how different local housing dynamics in immigrant neighborhoods shape experiences of integration and broader processes of neighborhood change.

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.

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.

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.” Revise and Resubmit.

  • 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.” Under Review.