BY MORGAN FISCHER T he week of Thanksgiving, 67-year-old Phoenix resident Juanita sat at the end of the third pew in the downtown Phoenix Arcadia Biltmore Justice Court, engulfed in nervous antici- pation. She clutched her small beige purse as she stared straight ahead, listening to Judge Leonore Driggs call the cases of defendant after defendant. In a few minutes, she’d learn if her family still had a place to live. Just days earlier, Juanita received an eviction notice on the front door of her two-bedroom detached apartment in which she’s lived for seven years. Inside, the space is cramped. Juanita shares a bed with her daughter, while her sister, who is disabled and can’t work, sleeps in the other bedroom. Juanita, who asked that her last name not be used to protect her privacy, isn’t alone. Through November, there have been 79,858 eviction filings this year in Maricopa County, which is on track to break a record set in 2005. Thirteen out of every 100 renters in Phoenix have had eviction proceedings brought against them, according to Princeton University’s Eviction Lab. Only two major cities — New York and Houston — have seen more evic- tion filings than Phoenix. In Arizona, the problem continues to grow. The number of eviction filings has increased since the COVID-19 pandemic, and Maricopa County just missed breaking its eviction record last year. The causes of the crises are myriad: Arizona’s low housing stock and especially its lack of affordable housing, rapidly rising rents, stagnant wages and inequities in the court system all contribute. The pandemic exac- erbated every single one of them. “The numbers are going up, and they’re tragically high right now, but it’s been pretty bad for a long time,” said Drew Schaffer, the executive director of the William E. Morris Institute for Justice, which focuses on protecting the rights of low-income Arizonans. In the Valley, the crisis plays out daily in the county’s 27 Justice Courts. Month after month, thousands of residents pile into courtrooms and Zoom rooms hoping to keep a roof over their heads and keep the constable at bay. Often, they have no one to help them through the process. Just as often, their landlords win. A worsening crisis It wasn’t always this bad. From 1990 to 2024, household incomes in Phoenix increased by 90%, but that significantly lags behind home prices — they’ve ballooned by a whopping 432% over the same period, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Now Phoenix is a hotspot for housing unaffordability. The Arizona Department of Housing says the state is about 270,000 homes short of what it needs to meet demand. Two-thirds of that housing gap specifically affects low-income renters — per the Arizona Research Center for Equity and Sustainability, the state is more than 183,000 affordable housing units short. With low supply and high demand, rents have unsurprisingly skyrocketed, rising nearly 72% over the last decade. Today, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Phoenix is $1,328 a month. To afford that — meaning to spend no more than 30% of one’s income on housing — tenants must make $53,112 per year, according to Apartments.com. Here’s the problem: In Phoenix, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, roughly 30% of households make less than $50,000 a year. In fact, nearly half of renters cannot comfortably afford their rent. These tenants are “cost-burdened,” with many spending between 50% to 80% of their income on rent instead of the recommended 30%. “The rents are too high for families and households to be able to sustain,” Schaffer said. “They’re spending a disproportionate amount of their resources on rent and housing costs. And that’s why, when they have a temporary financial emergency, they end up facing eviction.” But for one small twist of fate, Catherine Wilkins knows that could be her. The 65-year-old pays $1,080 a month to rent a West Phoenix studio apartment. A back injury prevents her from working, so she lives off of her monthly $1,400 disability check. That means more than 77% of her income goes to housing. Despite living in a low-income senior housing complex, Wilkins has seen her rent continue to rise while her disability check never gets any bigger. Plenty of renters are in a similar position. While incomes in Phoenix did rise by 32% from 2010 to 2022, rents rose by more than double that amount during the same period. That puts tenants in a precarious spot, squeezing costs to make ends meet. To cut costs, Wilkins often seeks meals at a local food bank. She’s stopped buying meat because she can no longer afford it. For a money-strapped renter, one disaster could quickly lead to eviction. If a child gets sick, a car is totaled or a job is lost, the home could be next. “It’s a mess for us out there,” Wilkins said. “And I’m not the only one who goes through this.” So far, Wilkins has avoided an eviction notice, but Juanita has not been so fortu- nate. Like Wilkins, Juanita badly hurt her back in an accident. She needs trigger point injections and is unable to work. Her social security hasn’t kicked in yet, leaving her without a source of income and unable to pay rent for the last three months. As she awaited her name to be called in court, she owed $4,424.25 in unpaid rent, utilities and late fees. “When it rains,” she said, “it pours.” ‘I still live in fear’ As she waited to hear her name, Juanita held on to the smallest glimmer of hope. Not every eviction filing results in an eviction. But in the eviction process and even before it, almost all of the power resides with the landlord. For low-income renters, the threat of eviction constantly looms. When a notice does appear, it begins a two- to three-week legal process that can be incredibly stressful for tenants. Evictions themselves don’t tell the whole story, which is why the Eviction Lab looks at filings rather than judgments. Though Arizona Multihousing Association spokesperson David Leibowitz said about a third of filings are settled outside of court, Eviction Lab research specialist Grace Hartley says informal evictions — those occurring through a substantial rent increase or threats by landlords — also are common. Eviction Lab estimates that for A day in eviction court, where the housing crisis wrecks lives.
