Created by Mia Loseff and Erin Hahn
Texas Housers has officially launched our Bexar County Eviction Case dashboard, which tracks evictions filed in Bexar County over the course of recent years. Similar to online eviction trackers that currently exist for other Texas cities, this dashboard is the first public-facing analysis of eviction filings in Bexar County.
The dashboard analyzes trends in eviction filings from 2018 through 2022, and provides additional detail on the neighborhoods that received the most eviction filings as well as the apartment complexes that filed the most evictions in 2022. Research has well established that evictions cause severe harm to the health of individuals, families, and communities. The Bexar County Eviction Case Dashboard can now be used to identify areas of the county where renters are most at risk of experiencing eviction and their lasting negative impacts.
With today’s release of the Bexar County Eviction Case Dashboard, we share the following insights:
- Eviction filings in Bexar County were rising steadily in the years before the pandemic, drastically dropped in 2020 and 2021 due to pandemic-era protections, and then rocketed back in 2022 after protections disappeared.
- Evictions in 2022 appear to have been more prevalent in Bexar County’s low income neighborhoods of color than areas that are predominantly white and wealthy.
- Several apartment complexes filed evictions in massive amounts – some complexes filed eviction cases on more than a third of their entire renter population in 2022.
- Eviction cases were significantly more likely to be ruled in favor of the landlord. Judges ruled for the landlord in 76% of eviction cases in Bexar County in 2022.
Eviction filings are becoming more and more prevalent in Bexar County, and because there are very few protections for renters facing eviction, the majority of filings result in the judge ruling to displace the household from their home. Local programs, such as Right to Counsel and rental assistance, have effectively kept renters in their homes but are in dire need of expansion from the pilot phases they are in. The upward trend in evictions can be expected to continue until government officials take meaningful action to promote renter stability in Bexar County.
We invite you to explore the dashboard here.
