Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Housing instability—and particularly forced displacement via eviction—is typically conceived of and studied as an urban problem. Research documenting the suburbanization of poverty makes clear, however, that a growing share of American households at risk of eviction now live in suburban areas. Are evictions becoming more prevalent in these areas? How closely do eviction patterns track socio-demographic changes? Which areas successfully avoid spikes in evictions?

Eviction is both a personal and a societal crisis, and one that may be experienced differently in suburban areas than in central cities. For the displaced, eviction has lasting adverse effects on mental and financial wellbeing, as well as residential stability. Because of limited housing supply and social safety net shortages, those being evicted in the suburbs may face particular hardship. For communities, eviction is a symptom of crises of housing affordability, cost burden, and displacement. Suburban landlords, policy makers, and court personnel may face challenges as residents become poorer and institutional resources are stressed. Understanding both how these actors have responded to socio-demographic change and where evictions have not risen is crucial to policy design.

We use 83 million court records collected, cleaned, and validated by the Eviction Lab to analyze the prevalence and distribution of evictions over the period 2000–2016. We focus on Census tracts within the 100 largest metropolitan areas and use data from the 2000 Census and multiple waves of the American Community Survey to evaluate changes in poverty rates and socio-demographic composition of residents.

Fundamentally, our analysis maps patterns of eviction onto the changing geography of poverty. We explore the relationship between poverty and eviction descriptively and then analyze variation within and between metropolitan areas. We consider where the relationship exists with a series of figures and maps. We measure the suburbanization of poverty and eviction on several different dimensions including contiguity, concentration, clustering, and de-centralization. These results inform the latter steps of our analysis. To understand neighborhoods within their region, we employ hierarchical linear models to nest neighborhood-level change within municipal, county, and metropolitan contexts. Neighborhood fortunes are linked to broader economic and political contexts and we consider how neighborhoods within places may follow similar trajectories. Finally, we compare metropolitan regions to evaluate how housing policies, income and racial segregation, and investment patterns may influence the relationship between suburban poverty and eviction.

The suburbanization of poverty and eviction presents particular challenges for local governments and institutions that are bearing the brunt of social changes. We present policy interventions intended to alleviate the strain on individuals, neighborhoods, and organizations. We also reflect on the significance of our findings for sociological understandings of poverty, neighborhood change, and displacement.