The Structure of Eviction in Central Florida: A Python-Based Approach to Assembling an Annual Case-Level Dataset of Civil Court Records in Orange County, 2024

Eviction is one of the most common legal processes shaping housing insecurity in the United States, with millions of cases filed each year. Yet the indicators most often used to describe the eviction crisis typically stop at the front end of the process, measuring filings and sometimes judgments without showing how cases resolve, how quickly they move, or how often they reach enforcement. This thesis addresses that blind spot by constructing an original case-level dataset of 15,039 residential eviction cases filed in Orange County, Florida in 2024, collected by scraping the county clerk’s public docket using a custom Python browser automation tool. I ask three linked questions: how landlord type (corporate vs. non-corporate) shapes case outcomes; how tenant legal representation affects case disposition; and what share of cases reach the enforcement stage, and for whom. I find that the 2024 docket is defined by corporate dominance and extreme legal asymmetry. Corporate plaintiffs file 88% of cases; plaintiffs have attorneys in 92.5% of filings, while tenants have attorneys in only 1.5%. Writs of possession, where the court orders that authorize a sheriff to physically remove a tenant from a property, are issued in 52.6% of filings, and 90.6% of issued writs are posted, meaning the sheriff has served notice at the property that removal is imminent. Corporate filings are substantially more likely to end in dismissal or settlement, while non-corporate cases more often end in administratively closed outcomes whose final resolution is less legible in the docket record. I argue that eviction court in Orange County functions as dual infrastructure: a high-volume rent-enforcement system that corporate repeat players use routinely and strategically, and, given the near-total absence of tenant counsel, a rapid pathway to physical displacement for the tenants who are least equipped to navigate the system’s compressed procedural timelines.