In 2022, a handful of large U.S. cities saw landlords remove renters from homes at rates that surpass the typical pre-COVID-19-pandemic rate, according to a new report from the Eviction Lab at Princeton University.
Belong used data compiled by the Eviction Lab to compare how eviction levels changed in 11 major U.S. cities in 2022. The cities are sorted by the change in eviction filings relative to the historical average from 2021 to 2022. Not every U.S. city was considered in this analysis due to the lack of comprehensive, current data. It looks at a geographically diverse cross section of cities with populations of 1 million or more and should not be viewed as a comprehensive ranking.
Unlike other kinds of housing data real estate agents and other professionals consult and trade daily, eviction data is not easy to obtain. Historically, the data has resided with thousands of local governments where evictions occur. There are few places where that data has been made readily available online until now.
Through its data collection, the Eviction Lab gives the American public a peek into a part of public life that has not always been made public—tracking eviction filings in 34 cities with the help of organizations on the ground in those communities. An eviction filing is the legal document created when a landlord files a case in court to have a tenant removed from their property.
Eviction rates rose in all 32 cities tracked by the Eviction Lab in 2022. The eviction rate in this analysis refers to the number of evictions per 100 rental properties in a given area. In all, landlords in these places filed about 970,000 eviction cases, up 79% compared to the year before.
The increase comes after a period of unprecedented federal housing protections for renters.
The pandemic did something no economic catastrophe in recent history has—it convinced legislators to enact sweeping national policies that materially lowered the rate of evictions.
For roughly 1.5 years, the country maintained the strongest safeguards for keeping renters housed in recent history. In September 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention imposed a federal eviction moratorium, which was essentially a ban on evictions under most circumstances, including failure to pay rent, as a measure to protect public health by preventing the spread of COVID-19. The disease spreads more quickly when people are forced to live in close quarters or share housing with friends, family, or strangers at a homeless shelter or other group housing.
The federal government also allocated billions in rental assistance dollars for tenants as part of the bailout packages passed to help Americans weather the economic effects of the pandemic.
Those measures, however, were temporary and elicited concern from landlords who said it tied their hands when trying to remove problematic tenants. Proponents argued that with so much aid money being made available, there was no need to remove tenants. But only the most progressively aligned members of Congress were willing to continue pushing for a continuation of the policy, which began under former President Donald Trump's administration but was struck down by the Supreme Court in August 2021.
Housing advocates warned that a wave of evictions would emerge as localities rescinded their respective eviction moratoriums following the Supreme Court decision. That wave, however, failed to materialize in the final months of 2021.
Still, data from select cities in 2022 shows evictions did surge in some places shortly thereafter.
And economic conditions continue to become more difficult following the initial few waves of COVID-19 infection in the U.S. Historic inflation reared its head in late 2021 and has burned through Americans' purchasing power in the years since—with housing costs rising particularly sharply.
