Eviction destabilizes not only housing, but also food security and community

When a tenant loses their home in eviction, they don't just lose four walls. They lose the stove where dinner is made and the freezer where food is stored. Eviction also disrupts the table where children do homework, the fridge where insulin is kept cold, and the porch where neighbors gather. Eviction is never just a housing issue. It cascades into hunger and fractured communities.

I see this play out daily as an eviction defense attorney. In California's unlawful detainer courts, landlords often push cases forward with a speed and aggressiveness that disregards due process. Too often, discovery tools, which are designed to promote fairness, are misused as weapons. Voluminous, irrelevant requests are dropped on tenants who lack the resources to respond, or even understand what is being asked of them. Requests for admission are buried in a mountain of confusing paperwork, or worse, are served via "personal service" behind a shrub and never see the light of day (true story). Motions to deem those requests for admission to be admitted are filed as a shortcut to an unjust victory. The legal process itself becomes a lever for displacement when the discovery is abused.

But eviction isn't driven only by litigation tactics. Even tenants who pay rent faithfully can be displaced under California's insufficient rent-control framework. The Tenant Protection Act of 2019, touted as a safeguard, still allows annual rent increases of up to 10% under certain facts in California. Even strong incomes, like mine, or yours, couldn't reasonably keep up with a 10% increase in housing costs year after year. In Los Angeles, some units have stronger protections. Those rents are capped at about 4% annually, but for tenants on fixed incomes that figure is still staggering. It is easy for homeowners to overlook what it means to face the constant threat of being priced out. Renters live with that instability every day, and it is a challenge invisible to many of the people with the most power over their fate: the lawmakers who write statutes, the landlords who set rents, judges and the attorneys who prosecute these eviction cases.

The consequences extend far beyond a court docket. Families forced from their homes often land in temporary shelter, such as a car or motel. Without stable housing, it becomes impossible to prepare regular meals, store fresh food, or accommodate dietary and medical needs. Many families don't have the capacity to transport or maintain frozen food as the bridge to their next stable living facility is often a shelter. Parents stretch budgets at fast-food counters instead of grocery stores. Children lose the security of family and neighbors. What begins as a technical abuse of discovery in court ends as food insecurity in the community.

Eviction also unravels neighborhoods. Church pews thin out, and little league teams lose players when families are displaced. Birthday parties in the park have missing seats. Elderly neighbors lose the support system that used to check on them. The community fabric, already fragile under the weight of Los Angeles' housing crisis, frays even further.

For some families, eviction doesn't end with displacement. Evictions lead to life outdoors, where survival itself can be treated as unlawful. Unhoused people are ticketed or jailed for sleeping in public spaces, resting in cars, or cooking meals outdoors. These are not acts of malice; they are acts of necessity. Yet fines and criminal records pile up, trapping families in a cycle of poverty that began with losing their homes. When eviction drives people into homelessness, the legal system doesn't just fail to protect them, it punishes them for being poor.

Even new communities that form in the wake of displacement are criminalized. Groups like Food Not Bombs, which prepare and share meals in public parks, have faced police crackdowns and citations simply for feeding hungry people. The same system that fails to keep families housed then punishes both the unhoused for eating and their neighbors for feeding them. In this way, eviction doesn't just dismantle kitchens in private homes. Eviction undermines the very solidarity that might sustain people through displacement.

California's Senate Bill 634 was introduced to push back against this very trend. The measure prevents cities from punishing those who provide food, water, or other basic survival services to unhoused people. In short, it tries to stop the criminalization of compassion. The fact that such legislation is even necessary speaks volumes: our legal system has too often treated the act of feeding hungry people as a crime, rather than as the community lifeline it is.

But SB 634 has not yet passed, and until it does, the burden falls on the tools we already have. Courts must use their authority to check abusive discovery practices that turn procedure into a weapon, and legislators must strengthen rent control laws that still permit staggering annual increases and leave renters vulnerable even when they pay on time. The law should be a safeguard, not a driver of instability. These choices decide whether families keep access to kitchens with a fridge and proximity to neighbors, the ordinary rhythms that make stability possible. Every gap in enforcement and every loophole in the law shows up in the same place: another community frayed.

Some may think this instability is confined to low-income communities, but eviction ripples outward. Families forced from their homes turn to shelters and the criminal justice system, costs that taxpayers shoulder. Emergency rooms become crowded with those who have been disenfranchised from caring for their health due to a lack of refrigerated medicine. Local economies contract when displaced workers stop spending in their neighborhoods, and the instability reaches even further when those same workers can no longer show up reliably.  Eviction affects the homes of caregivers, restaurant staff, and service employees whom wealthier households rely on. Neighborhoods with rising displacement also see more visible encampments and strained public systems, eroding the sense of stability that property owners and courts alike depend on. Eviction may begin as one landlord's lawsuit, but its consequences are carried by the entire community.

When we defend a home against eviction, we defend more than a roof. We defend the stability of California itself.