Insight #8: No Tsunami: Evictions Will Remain Limited

By: Jay Parsons, Greg Willett and Nikki Jorski Anyone scanning a news feed over the last six months has probably heard about a looming crisis of historic proportions – a tidal wave of evictions facing tens of millions of renters. The only problem? The facts don’t back up the headlines – and that’s a good thing. Rental affordability challenges are very real, and even one eviction is one too many. Evictions are a lose/lose that benefit no one. Rental housing businesses depend on that income to pay the bills, and households depend on rental housing as a safe place to live. But exaggerating the problem is not going to solve the problem. Rather, it risks a “boy who cried wolf” scenario where policymakers become even more numb to the real challenges that actually do exist. Additionally, the false narrative wrongly demonizes property managers – the good ones far outnumber the bad ones – as many go to yeoman lengths to protect their renters. Let’s get to the facts, and then address how apartment owners can respond in 2021. 1. Evictions plunged in 2020 – even where and when legally allowed As we wrote in October: “Princeton’s Eviction Lab is tracking 17 markets in close to real time. In those cities, eviction filings from March 15 through September 20 had plunged 67% compared to historical averages … Even prior to the Center for Disease Control’s eviction moratorium, evictions were down materially in many cities without local eviction bans.” 2. Evictions are often for reasons OTHER THAN unpaid rent Most eviction bans have been so poorly worded that they end up backfiring on the very people they are intended to protect. For example, imagine a financially challenged family living at an apartment community. Their neighbors could be conducting criminal activity inside their unit and making threats to anyone who dares complain. They could have other neighbors damaging community am...