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More and more owners are filing for evictions in some Sun Belt cities as tenants increashingly struggle to pay rent.
Evictions are up by more than 35% compared to prepandemic averages in half a dozen cities, most of which are in Sun Belt states, new data from Princeton University’s Eviction Lab shows.
During the past 12 months, filings grew by 46% in Gainesville, Florida, compared to pre-Covid-19 years. The Eviction Lab also reported increases of 43%, 42% and 35% in Las Vegas, Houston and Phoenix, respectively.
Rates are also high in Minneapolis-St. Paul and Columbus, Ohio, which registered 44% and 37% increases in eviction filings.
Total eviction filing notices for the 34 cities tracked by the Eviction Lab increased by 15% over the past year. Unpaid rent is often the leading cause of eviction, frequently due to loss of employment or medical emergencies, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Property management software, which automates some parts of the eviction process, is another factor. The technology eliminates the possibility for landlords to use discretion or negotiate with tenants who are behind, researchers told the WSJ.
The root cause in the Sun Belt is tenants struggling to keep up with high rents after a low housing supply collided with increased demand during the pandemic and pushed rents skyward, according to the WSJ.
Sun Belt cities have been recording some declines in asking rents since their pandemic highs of 2021, data from Redfin released earlier this year shows.
But eviction rates are also high in some of those cities. Rents have come down by 5.6% during the last year in Jacksonville, Florida, but the city still has the 10th-biggest increase in eviction filings compared to prepandemic averages, according to Eviction Lab.
In some cities like Phoenix, a longer-term lack of affordable housing has also led to tenants leasing apartments they can’t afford.
“The availability of apartments that are under $1,000 a month is now pretty much nonexistent,” attorney Maxine Becker, who works with Arizona low-income advocacy group Wildfire Community Action Agency, told the WSJ.
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