Amid high rents, eviction filings in major Texas cities soar above pre-pandemic levels

By Joshua Fechter, The Texas Tribune Feb. 16, 2024 “Amid high rents, eviction filings in major Texas cities soar above pre-pandemic levels” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues. Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news. As more renters struggle to afford housing, Texas landlords are filing more evictions than they did before the COVID-19 pandemic — and tenants have few, if any, protections to keep them housed. Landlords filed more than 177,000 eviction cases in the Houston, Dallas, Austin and Fort Worth areas in 2023, according to records tracked by Eviction Lab, a research center based at Princeton University that tracks eviction filings. The figure represents a slight uptick from 2022, the first full year after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal government’s nationwide eviction moratorium. In Houston and Fort Worth, eviction filings have consistently exceeded pre-pandemic levels for nearly two years. “Cities in Texas used to be some of the more affordable ones in the country,” ​​said Adam Chapnik,...