SB 1160 creates a statewide eviction data pipeline. It directs the Judicial Council to collect counts of eviction proceedings and attorney representation, to publish annual, regionally viewable summaries, and to report to the Legislature.
Separately, it requires every trial court to send the Judicial Council monthly, ZIP Code–aggregated counts for unlawful detainer cases on specific metrics (cases filed, defaults/stipulated/pretrial judgments, trials with bench/jury split, and plaintiff-requested dismissals).
The law aims to give researchers, policymakers, and legal-services providers structured, geographically granular data to inform resource allocation and policy decisions. Implementation will force courts and the Judicial Council to adapt data collection and IT processes and raises trade-offs around privacy, data standardization, and funding that the bill does not resolve.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill requires courts to report monthly unlawful detainer counts aggregated by the premises' ZIP Code and requires the Judicial Council to collect statewide eviction counts and counsel-representation tallies. The Judicial Council must produce a quarterly electronic spreadsheet available via the California Public Records Act and publish annual, regionally viewable summaries and an annual legislative report beginning July 1, 2027.
Who It Affects
Trial courts, the Judicial Council, legal aid programs funded under Sargent Shriver, housing policy offices at state and local levels, researchers, and tenant/landlord advocates. Courts will handle the reporting mechanics; the Judicial Council will handle aggregation and publication.
Why It Matters
California lacks uniform, ZIP-level court data on evictions; this bill fills that gap and creates a repeatable feed for targeting legal services, tracking attorney representation in eviction cases, and measuring local eviction activity. The dataset’s usefulness will depend on courts’ implementation choices, data definitions, and how privacy risks are managed.
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What This Bill Actually Does
SB 1160 doubles down on two related reporting duties. First, it tasks the Judicial Council with collecting statewide counts of eviction proceedings started and tracking how many tenants and landlords were represented by counsel.
The Council must make those tallies available online in a way that users can view them by geographic region and must submit an annual report to the Legislature beginning July 1, 2027.
Second, the bill imposes a recurring reporting requirement on individual courts. Every month, courts must send the Judicial Council ZIP Code–aggregated totals for unlawful detainer cases on four discrete points: cases filed, cases resolved by default/stipulation or other pretrial judgment types already tracked by the Judicial Council, cases that proceeded to trial broken out by bench versus jury, and cases dismissed before trial at the plaintiff’s request.
The law limits this court-level reporting to unlawful detainer cases filed on or after January 1, 2027.To make the data accessible, the Judicial Council must assemble everything it receives into a public electronic spreadsheet every three months; that spreadsheet may be obtained through the California Public Records Act. The bill therefore creates both proactive publication (annual online views and a legislative report) and a CPRA-accessible quarterly deliverable, but it does not specify a mandatory public-facing dashboard beyond those deliverables.Practically speaking, courts will need to map case addresses to ZIP Codes, ensure consistent classification of case dispositions and trial types, and transfer aggregated counts on a monthly cadence.
The Judicial Council will need processes for cleaning and reconciling submissions, formatting the quarterly spreadsheet, and publishing the annual regional summaries. The statute does not appropriate funds or establish enforcement penalties, so operational capacity and consistency will depend on existing court resources and the Council’s implementation choices.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The Judicial Council must collect statewide counts of eviction proceedings and the numbers of tenants and landlords represented by counsel and publish annual, regionally viewable summaries, with an annual legislative report starting July 1, 2027.
Every trial court must report monthly, aggregated by the premises' ZIP Code, totals for unlawful detainer case filings, pretrial judgments/defaults/stipulations (as already tracked), trials (separately listing bench vs. jury), and plaintiff-requested dismissals.
The court reporting requirement applies only to unlawful detainer cases filed on or after January 1, 2027; the bill does not require back-filling historical case counts prior to that date.
The Judicial Council must compile all court submissions into a publicly available electronic spreadsheet every three months; that spreadsheet may be requested under the California Public Records Act rather than being automatically posted.
The bill contains no appropriation or enforcement penalty; it places operational and data-quality responsibilities on the Judicial Council and local courts without specifying funding or audit mechanisms.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Judicial Council collection and annual reporting on eviction cases and counsel representation
This section directs the Judicial Council to collect totals for eviction proceedings initiated and counts of tenants and landlords represented by counsel, then make those figures publicly available online annually and ensure they are viewable by geographic region. The Council must submit an annual report to the Legislature beginning July 1, 2027 and comply with Government Code Section 9795 on report format. The practical implication is that the Council must define geographic buckets, decide presentation formats, and reconcile court submissions to produce a single annual dataset.
Monthly court reporting of unlawful detainer metrics aggregated by ZIP Code
This subdivision requires each court to deliver monthly totals for unlawful detainer cases aggregated to the ZIP Code of the premises. Required metrics are (1) cases filed, (2) cases subject to defaults/stipulations/other pretrial judgments already tracked by the Council, (3) cases that went to trial with a bench-versus-jury breakdown, and (4) cases dismissed before trial at the plaintiff’s request. Courts will need to implement or adapt processes to determine the premises ZIP Code for each case and to export those aggregated counts on a strict monthly schedule.
Scope limited to new filings from January 1, 2027
This short provision confines the mandatory court submissions to unlawful detainer cases filed on or after January 1, 2027, so the data series will start at that date. That choice reduces the immediate burden of historical data collection but creates a discontinuity for analysts attempting to compare trends before and after implementation.
Quarterly public spreadsheet available via the California Public Records Act
Every three months the Judicial Council must format the received information into a publicly available electronic spreadsheet that may be requested under the California Public Records Act. The provision establishes a regular cadence for an exportable dataset but stops short of requiring continuous public posting or an interactive dashboard; access may be constrained by the Council’s CPRA handling and formatting choices.
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Explore Housing in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- State and local policymakers — Receive geographically detailed, court-verified eviction metrics to target interventions, monitor eviction trends, and measure the impact of housing policy changes.
- Legal aid providers and programs under the Sargent Shriver framework — Gain actionable data to pinpoint ZIP Codes with high filing volumes and low representation rates to direct outreach and grant applications.
- Researchers and academics — Obtain a recurring, ZIP-level dataset on filings and trial outcomes useful for spatial analysis, causal studies, and evaluation of housing interventions.
- Tenant and community organizations — Can identify local eviction hotspots and advocate for services, emergency rental assistance, or legal representation in specific neighborhoods.
Who Bears the Cost
- Trial courts (especially smaller or rural courts) — Must add the administrative work of mapping cases to ZIP Codes, extracting aggregated counts monthly, and ensuring consistent classification, all without new funding in the bill.
- Judicial Council — Bears the burden of aggregating submissions, reconciling inconsistent inputs, formatting quarterly spreadsheets, and publishing annual regional reports; those tasks require staff time and tooling.
- Tenants (privacy risk) — ZIP-level publication risks re-identification in low-population ZIPs or single-property ZIPs, exposing individuals or households to stigma or targeting if protections are not implemented.
- Landlords and property managers — Face increased public visibility of filing patterns that could lead to reputational scrutiny or local regulatory attention, particularly for high-volume filers.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
SB 1160 pits the public interest in granular eviction transparency—needed to target legal services and shape housing policy—against practical limits: administrative burden on under-resourced courts and real privacy risks from ZIP-level publication; reconciling usable, detailed data with privacy protections and unfunded operational requirements is the bill’s central dilemma.
The bill improves transparency but leaves several implementation choices unresolved. It requires ZIP Code aggregation but does not add explicit privacy safeguards (for example, suppression thresholds or minimum-cell-size rules) to prevent re-identification in low-population ZIPs or where a single property dominates filings.
The absence of mandated privacy controls shifts the onus to the Judicial Council and courts to adopt protective practices if they choose to do so.
Data quality and comparability are another open question. The statute lists specific metrics but does not define precise coding rules for dispositions, what counts as 'represented by counsel' in edge cases, or how to treat multi-unit properties and properties without a conventional street address.
Those ambiguities will produce variation across counties unless the Council issues detailed technical guidance. Finally, the bill creates recurring operational demands without an appropriation or enforcement mechanism; courts and the Council will need to absorb these costs or seek funding, which could delay reliable, timely publication.
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