About 20 percent of renters couldn’t pay their rents in full for at least one of the past three months, according to a new report from Apartment List, based on 41,000 respondents.
As a result, about 3.3 percent of renter respondents say they had experienced an eviction. Researchers extrapolated the findings to estimate about 3.7 million of 118 million American renters have faced an eviction. Another 7 percent of respondents say they’ve been threatened with an eviction within the past year.
Many respondents admit to struggling with rental insecurity. Researchers found that low-income renters, those without a college education, households with children, and black households are among those most at risk.
“Nearly one in five renters have difficulty paying rent, putting them in a tenuous position where the threat of eviction is never out of mind,” the researchers note in the report. “Evictions disrupt families and communities, imposing further harm on what are often the most vulnerable members of our population.”
Eviction rates are highest in the South and Midwest.
Source: “Rental Insecurity: The Threat of Evictions to America’s Renters,” Apartment List (Oct. 20, 2017)
