Texas Housers has officially launched our Texas Eviction Case dashboard as a part of our Texas Eviction Diversion Tracker. Alongside the Emergency Rental Assistance dashboard, these two data sets expands the picture of what tenants in danger of eviction are facing.
This new tool allows users to track new eviction cases numbers for Texas as well as individual counties in the state. Users can track eviction case numbers, rates, and change over time. The dashboard also tracks Justice of the Peace courts across the state who fail to meet their legal duty to report landlord-tenant disputes to the State on a timely basis.
The Eviction Case Dashboard helps users visualize and learn more about where eviction cases are occurring in the state. Although there are gaps, this is the most complete picture available of the number and rate of eviction cases in all of Texas’ 254 counties. Research has well established that evictions cause a host of health, educational, and other socioeconomic harms to individuals, families, and communities. The pandemic has only highlighted the role that stable, secure housing plays in leading a decent, healthy life. Simply understanding where evictions are happening frequently in Texas is a critical step to making evictions rare and fair.
The Texas Housers Eviction Tracker can also be used together with the Emergency Rental Assistance Tracker – which we launched last month – to reveal more about where ERA funding is still available yet eviction cases are moving forward in the court system, needlessly putting low-income tenants at risk. Both dashboards are conveniently hosted on the same page for comparison.
With today’s update of Texas Housers’ Eviction Diversion Tracker page, we can share the following insights:
- Eviction case numbers across the state have gone up since the federal moratorium was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in August.
- New eviction cases are being filed even in counties where there are still emergency rental assistance funds available for renters and landlords, such as Montgomery, Nueces, and Jefferson Counties. Where there is rent relief available, there should be no evictions for nonpayment of rent.
- Counties with the most eviction cases include most of the major metropolitan areas except for Travis County, which has the last remaining moratorium in the state. Other counties with high numbers of eviction cases include Collin, Denton, Nueces, Bell, and Montgomery.
- Some counties with high numbers of eviction cases also have high eviction case rates (cases per number of renter households). These include Tarrant and Nueces Counties, both of which saw eviction filings for about 1 in every 200 renter households in the month of November alone.
- Many courts in the state are not fulfilling their legal obligation to report eviction case numbers to the State. We treat the eviction numbers reported to the State as a baseline number, but this dereliction of duty by Justices of the Peace makes it nearly impossible to accurately assess the strain that evictions are placing on Texas communities. Notable offenders include Hidalgo, Lubbock, and Harrison Counties.
The Texas Housers Eviction Dashboard uses data from the State of Texas Office of Court Administration (OCA). Texas Justices of the Peace are required to submit monthly case numbers and other case data to the OCA. Texas Housers will update the dashboard on a monthly basis, on or around the 15th of each month. You can visit the Eviction Diversion Tracker at texashousers.com/dashboard
