Evictions in metropolitan areas are on the rise as Texas landlords are filing more than they did before the COVID 19 pandemic.
As the Texas economy boomed in the pandemic era and demand for housing skyrocketed, rents in the state’s major urban areas increased by double digits.
In 2023, landlords filed more than 177,000 eviction cases in the Houston, Dallas, Austin and Fort Worth, according to Eviction Lab, a research center based at Princeton University. The number is an uptick from 2022 while at the same time, the rent for properties began to rise.
Around $1.8 billion in federal rent relief flowed to Texas over the course of the pandemic, helping more than 265,000 families keep a roof over their heads. Now that money has all but run out, and the state stopped the relief program. Most local governments, too, have closed their rental assistance programs for lack of federal funds.