There was also $46.5 billion in federal Emergency Rental Assistance that helped tenants pay rent and funded other tenant protections. The federal government, as well as many states and localities, issued moratoriums during the pandemic that put evictions on hold most have now ended. Many vulnerable tenants would have been evicted long ago if not for a safety net created during the pandemic. There are few places for displaced tenants to go, with the National Low Income Housing Coalition estimating a 7.3 million shortfall of affordable units nationwide. By December, eviction filings were nearly back to pre-pandemic levels.Īt the same time, rent prices nationwide are up about 5% from a year ago and 30.5% above 2019, according to the real estate company Zillow. The latest data mirrors trends that started last year, with the Eviction Lab finding nearly 970,000 evictions filed in locations it tracks - a 78.6% increase compared to 2021, when much of the country was following an eviction moratorium. Nashville was 35% higher and Phoenix 33% higher in May Rhode Island was up 32% in May. Paul, rates rose 106% in March, 55% in April and 63% in May. Landlords file around 3.6 million eviction cases every year.Īmong the hardest-hit are Houston, where rates were 56% higher in April and 50% higher in May. “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.”Įviction filings are more than 50% higher than the pre-pandemic average in some cities, according to the Eviction Lab, which tracks filings in nearly three dozen cities and 10 states. “Protections have ended, the federal moratorium is obviously over, and emergency rental assistance money has dried up in most places,” said Daniel Grubbs-Donovan, a research specialist at Princeton University's Eviction Lab. Most low-income tenants can no longer count on pandemic resources that had kept them housed, and many are finding it hard to recover because they haven't found steady work or their wages haven't kept pace with the rising cost of rent, food and other necessities. The Williams family is among millions of tenants from New York state to Las Vegas who have been evicted or face imminent eviction.Īfter a lull during the pandemic, eviction filings by landlords have come roaring back, driven by rising rents and a long-running shortage of affordable housing. “I really don’t want to be here by the time his birthday comes" in August, De'mai Williams said. But at $275-a-week, it was all they could afford on Williams' $900 monthly social security check and the $800 his daughter gets biweekly from a state agency as her father’s caretaker. They moved into a dilapidated Atlanta hotel room with water dripping through the bathroom ceiling, broken furniture and no refrigerator or microwave. They have been living in limbo ever since. ATLANTA – Entering court using a walker, a doctor's note clutched in his hand, 70-year-old Dana Williams, who suffers serious heart problems, hypertension and asthma, pleaded to delay eviction from his two-bedroom apartment in Atlanta.Īlthough sympathetic, the judge said state law required him to evict Williams and his 25-year-old daughter De’mai Williams in April because they owed $8,348 in unpaid rent and fees on their $940-a-month apartment.
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