Apartment List analysis at rental insecurity across the U.S. finds single mothers face high rates of evictions. While the affordability crisis affecting housing across the country has become a pressing issue, one of the sad results of this era of continually rising rents, evictions, is less understood.
To help grasp the prevalence and impact of evictions, Apartment List analyzed data from its users to create a larger trend report, estimating eviction rates around the country. The results drawn from 41,000 surveys and the anonymized data of millions of users, echo the difficulties caused by rising rent payment. Nearly one in five survey respondents reported they were unable to pay rent in full for at least one of the last three months. The data leads the authors to suggest an estimated 3.7 million out of the country?s 118 million renters have been evicted. By design, this type of data collection and this subject suggest the estimate is more likely understated. But it underlines the precariousness many feel with regards to rent payment. The analysis found that 18 percent of respondents had difficulty paying rent within the last three months, a figure that rises to 27.5 percent in low-income housing.
An analysis of rental data by Harvard?s Joint Center for Housing Studies found that 38.9 million U.S. renters are cost-burdened (paying more than 30 percent of income for rent), with 18.8 million of those severely cost-burdened ( paying more than 50 percent of income for...