As policymakers across the country work to address issues facing recently evicted renters, apartment-search firm Apartment List has found that the effort suffers from a lack of comprehensive data about evictions and evicted renters. Court records can provide some clues as to the number of evictions that have gone to legal proceedings, but there's no central database for such records, which don't, for example, take into account the many evictions that are never taken to court. There's also no data on the number of renter households that experience rental insecurity, or difficulty paying rent with the constant threat or fear of eviction, notes the company.
Given this absence of official data, Apartment List has expanded its annual rental survey with questions about respondents’ eviction history, including whether they've experienced difficulty paying rent in the past three months; whether they've been threatened with eviction in the past year; and whether their last move was prompted by eviction. Apartment List has examined its 41,000 responses in the context of renters’ income, race, and education levels and complemented its findings with metro-level analyses of "anonymized" eviction data from the firm's entire user base.
Apartment List estimates that 3.3% of renters have been evicted at some time, and 2.4% have been evicted from their most recent residence. Given the estimated 118 million renters in the U.S., Apartment List also estimates that 3.7 million Americans have been affected by eviction.
Nearly one in five renters, or 18% of respondents, was unable to pay his or her rent in full at least once in the past three months, the most recent survey found, and about 7% of respondents have been threatened with eviction in the past year, almost double the proportion that have actually been evicted. Apartment List notes that many renters move voluntarily to avoid eviction, a circumstance that can be just as stressful as a true eviction.
Rental insecurity disproportionately affects low-income renters, renters without a college education, and members of racial minorities, the survey found. Over one-quarter of low-income renters, or 27.5%, reported they'd been unable to pay their rent at least once in the past three months. Respondents with only a high school education are three times as likely to be threatened with eviction as those with a bachelor’s degree.
Eleven percent of households that earned less than $30,000 per year had faced an eviction threat, and 3.4% had been evicted from their previous residence. In contrast, 3.1% of renter households earning more than $60,000 per year had faced an eviction threat, and 1.5% had been evicted.
Black renters are more likely to be evicted or experience rental insecurity than white renters, Apartment List found, regardless of income or education level. The company also determined that 11.9% of all black renter households faced an eviction threat in the past year, compared with 5.4% of white households and 2.5% of Asian households. Black households hold the highest rates of eviction at all levels of educational attainment, and 15.6% of low-income black respondents had faced an eviction threat, compared with 9% of low-income white respondents.
Households with children are twice as likely to face an eviction threat as households without children, regardless of the marital status of the adult or adults in the home. Thirty percent of single-parent households reported difficulty paying rent in the most recent survey, but married-parent households weren't far behind, at 27.2%. For respondents without children, the rates were 14.7% and 13.3%, respectively.
Apartment List attributes these high numbers to the high cost of child care, which can range from $8,043 to $18,815 per year. One-third of families surveyed reported that child care took up 20% or more of their income. The company notes that experiencing an eviction at an early age can have long-lasting consequences on childhood development. According to Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond, mothers who have experienced an eviction are more likely to report poor health in their children.
At the metro level, eviction rates are highest in the South and Midwest. Memphis, Tenn., has the highest eviction rate among the 50 largest metros in the nation, at 6.1%. Eviction rates correlate with the rate of foreclosures between 2007 and 2008 as well as with poverty rates in the area. Memphis has the highest share of residents living in poverty among the 50 largest metros, at 19.4%. Surprisingly, while San Jose, San Francisco, Boston, and New York are among the nation’s most expensive metros, they also exhibit the lowest eviction rates.
