Researchers Release National Database of Evictions

The Eviction Lab at Princeton University recently released the first national database of court eviction records in the United States. The Eviction Lab is a team of researchers, students, and website architects who believe that a stable, affordable home is central to human flourishing and economic mobility. It’s led by Matthew Desmond, the author of the Pulitzer-prize winning book, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, which raised awareness about evictions with the public and policy-makers nationwide.

The lab has published the first ever dataset of evictions in America, going back to 2000. The data, assembled from about 83 million court records going back to 2000, suggest that the most pervasive problems aren’t necessarily in the most expensive regions. Evictions are accumulating across Michigan and Indiana. And several factors build on one another in Richmond: It’s in the Southeast, where the poverty rates are high and the minimum wage is low; it’s in Virginia, which lacks some tenant rights available in other states; and it’s a city where many poor African-Americans live in low-quality housing with limited means of escaping it.

The lab’s website includes a mapping tool showing eviction rates and eviction filing rates by state or county and city rankings for evictions, and the website allows users to download eviction and demographic data for states, counties, cities, and census tracts.

For more information, click here.