Although millions of eviction lawsuits are filed each year, inconsistent data collection obscures the true extent of the housing crisis facing American renters.
Evictions, a clear indicator of America’s rental housing crisis, are poorly documented, leaving a significant gap in understanding the full impact. In 2022, over half of all renters spent more than a third of their income on housing, and millions of them faced eviction for unpaid rent. However, the lack of comprehensive data on evictions makes it difficult to fully grasp the extent of the crisis.
The most reliable data, from Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, shows 3.6 million evictions in 2018, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Court records, which vary considerably by county, often do not contain detailed outcomes of these proceedings. In addition, informal evictions, such as when landlords change locks or turn off utilities without involving the court, are rarely documented. “There’s virtually nothing on things that might happen outside of the court system,” notes Jill Naamane of the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
Housing activists and researchers argue that better eviction data is critical for policymakers to effectively address the affordable housing crisis. Despite a 2020 directive to the Department of Housing and Urban Development to create a federal eviction database, no such system exists. Meanwhile, the Eviction Lab, although it aggregates over 99 million records, lacks reliable data for counties where a third of renters live. “That makes it really difficult to get that data out there,” said Camila Vallejo, a researcher at the Eviction Lab.
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