About Eviction Lab

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Bearing witness to America’s eviction epidemic.

Introduction

A woman watches as her belongings are removed from her home. (Photo: Michael Kienitz)

Introduction

Today, the majority of poor renting families in America spend over half of their income on housing costs, and eviction is transforming their lives. Yet little is known about the prevalence, causes, and consequences of housing insecurity.

The Eviction Lab is a team of researchers, students, and website architects who believe that a stable, affordable home is central to human flourishing and economic mobility. Accordingly, understanding the sudden, traumatic loss of home through eviction is foundational to understanding poverty in America.

Drawing on tens of millions of records, the Eviction Lab at Princeton University has published the first ever dataset of evictions in America, going back to 2000. We hope you’ll join us in using the tools of this website to discover new facts about how eviction is shaping your community, raising awareness and working toward new solutions.

“Eviction functions as a cause, not just a condition of poverty."
—Matthew Desmond

Background

Background

Matthew Desmond started studying housing, poverty, and eviction in 2008, living and working alongside poor tenants and their landlords in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Combining ethnographic fieldwork with original statistical analyses, Desmond discovered that eviction was incredibly prevalent in low-income communities and functioned as a cause, not just a condition, of poverty. This work was summarized in his book, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016).

When speaking to people and policymakers across the country about Evicted, Desmond realized the need to collect national data on eviction to address fundamental questions about residential instability, forced moves, and poverty in America. With the support of the Gates, JPB, and Ford Foundations, as well as the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Desmond founded the Eviction Lab in 2017 with the conviction that stable, affordable housing can be an effective platform to promote economic mobility, health, and community vitality.

Big problems demand big data.

Our Work

Case files are stacked high inside a housing courtroom. (Photo: Sally Ryan)

Our Work

Through this website, the Eviction Lab has made nationwide eviction data publicly available and accessible. We hope this data is used by policymakers, community organizers, journalists, educators, non-profit organizations, students, and citizens interested in understanding more about housing, eviction, and poverty in their own backyards. You can look at evictions over time, map evictions in the United States, compare the eviction rates of different neighborhoods, cities, or states, and generate custom reports about America’s eviction epidemic.

Researchers can use the data to help us document the prevalence, causes, and consequences of eviction and to evaluate laws and policies designed to promote residential security and reduce poverty. Together, we hope our findings will inform programs to prevent eviction and family homelessness, raise awareness of the centrality of housing insecurity in the lives of low-income families, and deepen our understanding of the fundamental drivers of poverty in America.

Eviction Lab Team

GRADUATE RESEARCH ASSISTANTS

UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH ASSISTANTS

Anne Kat Alexander photo

Anne Kat Alexander

Program Coordinator/Research Staff

Department of Housing and Urban Development, Program Specialist

Alieza Durana photo

Alieza Durana

Narrative Change Liaison, 2020-21

Writer, NerdWallet

LAVAR EDMONDS photo

LAVAR EDMONDS

Research Specialist, 2017-2020

Stanford University, PhD Student (Economics of Education)

Joe Fish photo

Joe Fish

Research Specialist

Duke University, PhD Student (Economics)

Ashley Gromis photo

Ashley Gromis

Postdoctoral Research Associate, 2017-2019

Postdoctoral Fellow at University of California, Los Angeles

Daniel Grubbs-Donovan photo

Daniel Grubbs-Donovan

Research Specialist

Stanford University, PhD Student (Sociology)

James Hendrickson photo

James Hendrickson

Senior Research Specialist, 2017-2019

University of Southern California, PhD Student (Public Policy and Management)

Aparna Howlader photo

Aparna Howlader

Postdoctoral Research Associate, 2019-2021

Assistant Professor of Economics, Chatham University

Amber Jackson photo

Amber Jackson

Research Specialist

Olivia Jin photo

Olivia Jin

Research Specialist

Stanford University, PhD Student (Sociology)

Katie Krywokulski photo

Katie Krywokulski

Administrative Assistant

New York University, PhD Student (English)

Annalaan LeMay photo

Annalaan LeMay

Administrative Assistant

Bruce Springsteen Archives at Monmouth University

Emily Lemmerman photo

Emily Lemmerman

Research Specialist

Communications and Outreach for NY Assm. Zohran Mamdani

Renee Louis photo

Renee Louis

Research Specialist, 2019-2021

PhD student at Stanford University, Dept. of Sociology

Helena Najm photo

Helena Najm

Research Lab Coordinator, 2019-2021

CUNY Graduate Center, PhD Student (Political Science)

Adam Porton photo

Adam Porton

Research Specialist, 2017-2019

University of Washington, MPA ‘21

Jasmine Rangel photo

Jasmine Rangel

Research Specialist

Jasmine Rangel – Senior Housing Associate, PolicyLink

STUDENT RESEARCHERS

Ndidi Anekwe photo

Ndidi Anekwe

Research Assistant

Henry Gomory photo

Henry Gomory

Graduate Research Assistant

Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California

Gracie Himmelstein photo

Gracie Himmelstein

Graduate Research Assistant

Resident in Internal Medicine, UCLA

Sherry Huang photo

Sherry Huang

Summer Intern

Andy Luu photo

Andy Luu

Summer Intern

Matt Mleczko photo

Matt Mleczko

Graduate Research Assistant

Post-Doctoral Associate at Rutgers

Scott Overbey photo

Scott Overbey

Research Assistant

Kangze (Steven) Peng photo

Kangze (Steven) Peng

Summer Intern

Martin Rogers photo

Martin Rogers

Summer Intern

Naomi Shifrin photo

Naomi Shifrin

Research Assistant

Sehrish Taqweem photo

Sehrish Taqweem

Summer Intern

Sharvari Tatachar photo

Sharvari Tatachar

Summer Intern

Lauren Traum photo

Lauren Traum

Summer Intern

Larry Zebaze photo

Larry Zebaze

Research Assistant

We thank the following Citizen Researchers for helping us build America’s first national database of evictions by providing original data to the Eviction Lab. If you would like to share eviction data with us, please email research@evictionlab.org.

Graham MacDonald

Associate Director, Data Science & Technology

Urban Institute

Assisted with: Washington, DC

Kyle Nelson

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Sociology

University of California, Los Angeles

Assisted with: Los Angeles and California

Aaron Dulles, esq.

Staff Attorney, Housing Unit

Community Legal Aid

Assisted with: Massachusetts

Tim Thomas

Moore/Sloan Data Science Postdoc, Department of Sociology

University of Washington

Assisted with: Washington State

Flatland—KCPT

Assisted with: Kansas and Missouri

Oksana Mironova & Thomas J. Waters

Housing Policy Analysts

Community Service Society

Assisted with: New York City

Jonathan Pyle

Contract Performance Officer

Philadelphia Legal Assistance

Assisted with: Pennsylvania

Terry Cannon

Attorney at Law

Legal Aid of the Bluegrass

Assisted With: Kentucky