Most people who want to buy a home one day will have to rent for a period of time before they’re ready for that big purchase. One challenge that some Milwaukee renters face is having an eviction on their record.
Even if the eviction was dismissed, experts say it can haunt a renter for years.
Since the beginning of the year, there have been over 3,000 eviction fillings in Milwaukee County, according to The Eviction Lab. Every eviction starts with a written notice that the tenant will be evicted — often for late, partial, or unpaid rent. If the tenant remains, the landlord can then file for a court hearing. If the judge rules that a tenant can be evicted, a judgment is made and the eviction is official.
Eviction filings put thousands of people in a hard position when they try to find stable housing. Nick Toman is the senior housing attorney for the Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee.
“A tenant with an eviction in their history, even if it is not really any fault of their own, is going to mean that their landlord's going to take a pass on them," says Toman. "If there's other tenants out there who are applying who have a cleaner rental history.”
One part of the problem is that most landlords use third-party tenant screening agencies.
Allison Freedman, a professor of law at the University of New Mexico Law School, says the agencies only tell prospective landlords that someone has an eviction filing on their record.
“They don't know if the case was dismissed, they have no idea if a tenant won the case, they don't know if the tenant stayed in the home. So, it doesn't matter whether or not you actually win or lose your case," says Freedman "If you are ever taken to an eviction court as a tenant, you get branded with what we often call in academics as the 'scarlet E.'”
In Wisconsin, once an eviction is filed it can stay on a person's record for two years if the case is dismissed or 10 years if the tenant is evicted.
The Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee runs eviction sealing clinics. At these clinics, renters, such as Purvisha Parker-Foxx, come to see if they can get their names sealed – or redacted from eviction cases.
“I was incarcerated. I left with a balance. So, I had to get all my stuff out, put it in the storage because I was incarcerated for seven months," says Parker-Foxx. "When I got out of incarceration, I noticed that I had an eviction on my name for leaving a balance, which I didn't have a choice.”
Parker-Foxx has been trying to navigate life with an eviction on her record since 2024. She says she rents her current space under her best friend’s name.
“I've been doing a lot of applications, but I have not been getting call backs and the only thing it can be is because of that," says Parker-Foxx. "Because I'm not a first-time renter, I've been renting since I was 17."
The eviction sealing clinic has a high rate of success. Between July and December 2025, more than three-quarters of eligible cases were sealed.
The process of sealing an eviction record can begin once a case is dismissed. A judge looks at whether money is still owed by the tenant and the severity of challenges the individual is facing.
Landlords or their attorneys have the right to respond to the requests.
Allison Freedman, the University of New Mexico professor, points to states like California and Colorado, which have what’s known as automatic eviction sealing, or point-of-filing sealing.
Under these laws, eviction cases are filed and immediately sealed. They are unsealed if a landlord wins a judgment.
Freedman says some landlords oppose sealing eviction records because they want to have clear insight into potential tenants’ past rental history. Freedman suggests limiting the amount of time an eviction stays on a person’s record.
“So there should be, in my view, some mechanism to seal a case after a certain number of years, so three years, five years," says Freedman "That gives landlords, you know, a snapshot of, let's say, 36 rental periods to still see what folks are doing in the rental space.”
Because many of California’s eviction records are sealed, it is difficult to determine how many individuals have been affected by its automatic sealing laws. But in interviews, the Urban Institute, a non-profit that studies urban problems and social policies, found that the law has resulted in positive changes for renters — by shifting more power to them.
