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Data: Eviction filings in Phoenix

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Eviction Lab at Princeton University tracks eviction filings across the country.

Its data is limited to states and cities that publish eviction filing data in such a way that they can collect it and it only contains eviction filings from January 2020 forward.

Phoenix is one of these places.

In the last week of July, more eviction papers were filed in the Valley than in any other city they track.

Most of the cities Eviction Lab analyzes are on the eastern seaboard and the Midwest, but Phoenix is joined by Las Vegas and Albuquerque in the southwest.

New York has the highest number of eviction filings since 2020 at around 173,000. This is followed by 135,000 in the Dallas Ft. Worth area.

Even though filings here were higher than any other when recent weekly data is compared, Phoenix is fourth on the list with about 115,000 eviction filings.

In Phoenix, weekly eviction filings dropped off just as the COVID-19 pandemic set in and the CDC put out a moratorium on evictions in September of 2020.

Weekly filings slowly picked up from that point and the last few weeks of available data resemble the weeks prior to the pandemic.

Eviction Lab’s data is organized into census tracts, roughly equivalent to neighborhoods, and analyzes eviction filings by the ethnicity the census determines is in the majority in the tract.

Eviction filings in white neighborhoods are slightly under representative while filings in Hispanic neighborhoods are proportional to their census population numbers in Maricopa County, about 30%.

It’s African Americans, Native Americans and other ethnic groups that are severely over representative in eviction filings.

Neighborhoods, where those groups are in the majority, make up about 30% of weekly filings. Combined they make up about 15% of Arizona’s population.

Eviction Lab also found that filings are not evenly distributed across all Phoenix landlords.

Since 2020, 1-in-5 filings have come from 100 apartment complexes.

One complex on 83rd Avenue has had 627 evictions filed since 2020.

The next highest is a complex on Indian School Road which has seen almost 500 filings in the same time frame.

With each eviction claim filed, the landlord will often claim the tenant owes back rent.

Eviction Lab reports on its website that this does not happen in every case, but in the data they have where a landlord did make a claim, the median claim is about $2,100.