Estimating eviction prevalence across the United States

Abstract

Significance Several negative effects of forced displacement have been well documented, yet we lack reliable measurement of eviction risk in the national perspective. This prevents accurate estimations of the scope and geography of the problem as well as evaluations of policies to reduce housing loss. We construct a nationwide database of eviction filings in the United States. Doing so reveals that 2.7 million households, on average, are threatened with eviction each year; that the highest eviction filing rates are not concentrated solely in high-cost urban areas; and that state-level housing policies are strongly associated with county-level eviction filing risk. These data facilitate an expanded research agenda on the causes and consequences of eviction lawsuits in the United States.

Building health equity through housing policies: critical reflections and future directions for research

“…Markets have driven rents upward while wages have stagnated, forcing nearly half of renter households to spend over 30% of their incomes on rent 9. For many, this spending is unsustainable: approximately 1 in 40 renter households is formally evicted annually in the USA10 and for every formal eviction, there are approximately 5.5 informal evictions 11. Among homeowners, unregulated financial speculation in housing markets led to a foreclosure crisis that many are still feeling the effects of.…”

“…9 For many, this spending is unsustainable: approximately 1 in 40 renter households is formally evicted annually in the USA 10 and for every formal eviction, there are approximately 5.5 informal evictions. 11 Among homeowners, unregulated financial speculation in housing markets led to a foreclosure crisis that many are still feeling the effects of. Perhaps the most visible and extreme consequence of unaffordable housing in the USA is homelessness, with an estimated 1 in 600 Americans living unhoused during the 2020 point-in-time count.…”

Eviction from public housing in the United States

“…Year fixed effects helped absorb time trends in eviction filings that may be correlated with other covariates in the models. State fixed effects accounted for time-invariant state-level differences previously observed in filing rates ( Gromis et al, 2019 ). All models specified robust standard errors clustered by PHA.…”

“…Spatial variation in filing rates may also reflect trends in eviction filings in the private rental market, which vary significantly across states. Many states in the Southeastern United States have significantly higher estimated filing rates, even after controlling for socio-demographic characteristics associated with eviction ( Gromis et al, 2019 ). This likely reflects differences in state-level landlord tenant policy ( Hatch, 2017 ), which determines the process for filing and prosecuting eviction cases (see also Merritt & Farnworth, 2020 ).…”

Evictions and tenant‐landlord relationships during the 2020–2021 eviction moratorium in the US

“…National estimates of the prevalence of evictions before the COVID‐19 pandemic indicate that of US households who moved within the past two years, about 0.81%–2.34% were a result of a formal eviction (Gromis & Desmond, 2021). There are various factors that lead to evictions, one systematic review identified four major categories of factors associated with eviction (Tsai & Huang, 2019).…”