January 5, 2018

Renters facing high level of evictions

Governing - During the housing crisis and Great Recession a decade ago, millions of Americans were evicted from their homes for being unable to pay their mortgages. Now, many housing experts say America is on the verge of a new eviction crisis, and this time, it's affecting renters.

Rental vacancy rates are at historic lows, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Rents are rising, but incomes generally are not. Given that reality, say Immergluck and others, it's only reasonable to expect that evictions are on the rise.

HIstorically there have been no reliable national statistics on evictions. Those researching evictions have relied on their own local field studies or court records to analyze the problem at a city or regional level. The U.S. Census Bureau, for example, only began tracking eviction data last year. But the indicators don't look good.

Apartment List, an online rental property search firm that also collects data on the rental market, recently published a report detailing what many housing experts say are troubling warning signs in the rental sector.

According to the report, nearly one in five renters were unable to pay the full amount of their rent for at least one month of a three-month period in 2017. Some 3.7 million Americans experienced an eviction at some point in 2017, and most of those renters earned less than $30,000 per year. (The number of evictions includes formal, court-ordered instances as well as "soft evictions," in which tenants leave under the threat of a formal eviction but before the actual notice had been given.)

1 comment:

Greg Gerritt said...

And the only kind of housing getting built in most urban areas is way too expensive for most folks.