Eviction Filings Soaring Above Pre-Pandemic Level In Some Cities

The pandemic spurred a historic wave of eviction protection for renters in the U.S., but those days are quickly going away.

Landlords filed paperwork seeing to evict nearly 970,000 renters across the country, a jump of more than 78% compared to 2021, the Associated Press reported, citing data from Princeton University’s Eviction Lab.

Eviction filings have spiked more than 50% higher than before the pandemic in some places, according to Eviction Lab, including in Houston, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Nashville, Phoenix and the state of Rhode Island. Eviction Lab tracks filings in 12 cities and 10 states, and notes that landlords normally move to evict 3.6 million households a year. 

“Across the country, low-income renters are in an even worse situation than before the pandemic due to things like massive increases in rent during the pandemic, inflation and other pandemic-era related financial difficulties,” Eviction Lab research specialist Daniel Grubbs-Donovan told the AP. “Protections have ended, the federal moratorium is obviously over and emergency rental assistance has dried up in most places.”

While the rate of rent growth has slowed this year, average rents continued to tick upward a little more than 4% year-over-year for the past nine months to an average of $1,995 per month as of May, according to Rent.com.

The federal government’s $46.5B in emergency rental assistance has all but dried up with Congress failing to inject further rescue dollars, and eviction moratoriums also have largely lapsed across many U.S. cities. The National Low Income Housing Coalition said there is a shortage of more than 7 million housing units priced for households earning 30% or less of an area’s median income.

The push is leading to a rise in homelessness across the nation. But at the same time, the rise in homeless camps and tent cities in many cities is generating a political backlash, with many cities increasing policing and sweeps of homeless camps, Next City reported.

The AP reported that renter and eviction protections that have remained in place in some cities, such as New York and Philadelphia — including sealing eviction records, forcing mediation to resolve cases and legal representation for tenants — have tamped down evictions by more than 30% from pre-pandemic levels.