More than 7 million U.S. renters, on average, face an eviction threat every year. Yet a number of states still make it difficult for local governments, advocates, and researchers to get complete eviction data and information about who is being evicted.

We need to improve eviction data in every corner of the country. Local governments’ ability to understand and act on our current housing crisis relies on leaders grasping the status of evictions in their communities.

With a concerted effort to invest in the local courts, which manage eviction filings, policymakers can go from navigating the eviction crisis blind to nipping it in the bud. Researchers and court systems have found that better data can result from simple changes, such as improved court standards and case management systems.

An Experiment Reveals Eviction Data Inconsistency

At Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, the housing research center I work for, we currently offer eviction data for more than 30 cities and 10 states — updated monthly and representing a third of renters in the country. But why do so many places still lack this information?

To understand this issue, I set out earlier this year to ask every state a relatively simple question regarding eviction data: How many evictions were filed annually statewide between 2018 to 2021? Nine states were unable to provide these baseline figures: Montana, Oklahoma, Illinois, Indiana, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina. While I had luck getting data in the remaining states, in many places it was only after extensive research and follow-up requests.

The federal government does not require states to track eviction data, and local courts vary in how they track such information — if they decide to do so at all.

While 10 states I requested data from had interactive public dashboards, 15 offered the data through already-generated reports often buried somewhere on their websites. Sixteen states created reports specifically for my request but differed in timeliness and how they categorized evictions.

Read the full article about eviction data gaps by Camila Vallejo at Smart Cities Dive.