By Catherine Reagor, Jessica Boehm, Ralph Chapoco | Arizona Republic
Metro Phoenix eviction filings are climbing back to pre-pandemic levels despite hundreds of millions of dollars in rental aid going to landlords.
Moratoriums helped keep many Valley renters in their homes, but those are over. Now tenants, some still trying to pay back rent after struggling during COVID-19, are also facing skyrocketing rents and wages that aren’t keeping up.
And Maricopa County renters who had evictions filed against them during the pandemic are facing record judgments despite hundreds of millions of dollars of rental aid going to landlords.
Housing researchers and tenant advocates say the rent-income gap, the lightning speed of Arizona’s eviction process and a lack of legal support for renters led to an eviction crisis in the Phoenix area that started even before the pandemic.
An Arizona Republic analysis found eviction filings in Maricopa County hit a five-year high in 2019, the year before the COVID-19 pandemic. In January, February and March of this year, Valley evictions reached about 91% of filings from the first three months of 2019.
