Until The Eviction Lab compiled over 80 million eviction records from cities, counties, and municipalities, the national extent of evictions wasn?t known?turns out it?s bad, really bad In 2016, sociologist Matthew Desmond published Evicted, a wrenching book that investigates the devastating circumstances and effects of evictions in impoverished neighborhoods in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. At the end of the book?which went on to win a Pulitzer Prize and make it onto President Obama?s must-read list of 2017?Desmond makes an admission: We don?t have national data available on evictions and therefore don?t fully understand the complexity of the crisis, making it difficult to enact policy solutions.
But now we do. The Eviction Lab?Desmond?s research group at Princeton University?just released the first-ever data set about evictions across 48 U.S. states. The Eviction Lab analyzed 80 million eviction records across the country, primarily from court filings (some of which exist only on paper and not in a digital database) and county-level documentation, to create an interactive map that lets people compare eviction data from 2000 to 2010 against census information like income, race, age, rent burden and more. It also created a list of the top-evicting areas in the U.S.

Loading...

This interactive map visualizes county-level evictions against the percentage of African-American residents, a demographic disproportionately affected by evictions.
Exploring the interactive map i...