Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The state of Pennsylvania enacted a strong eviction moratorium that extended until August 31, 2020. Eviction filings related to nonpayment of rent were not accepted during that period, and filings in Philadelphia County were down to zero in April, May, and June 2020. Filings increased following the end of the moratorium. Execution of eviction orders were generally banned until at least May 16, 2021.

Starting in April 2021, Philadelphia landlords were required to participate in the city’s eviction diversion program before filing for eviction for non-payment of rent.

  1. Data on renter population and median rent drawn from the American Community Survey (ACS). Details of the eviction process from the LSC Eviction Laws Database.

Filing Counts Last updated:

Filing Rates Over the Past Year

Trends in eviction filings

This plot shows monthly eviction filings in Philadelphia over the last year. Filings are displayed relative to the pre-pandemic average for the same set of months. You can toggle the plot to display filing counts and to extend the time frame back to January 2020.1

  1. Eviction filing data for Philadelphia County were collected by Jonathan Pyle at Philadelphia Legal Assistance. Historical averages cover the years 2016-2019.

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Eviction filings by defendant race/ethnicity and gender

There are often large racial/ethnic and gender disparities in eviction risk. Here, we estimate the demographic characteristics of those filed against for eviction over the last year. We compare to data from the ACS that show the share of renters in the same categories.1

Share of eviction filings

Share of renters

FILINGS OVER THE LAST YEAR BY DEFENDANT RACE/ETHNICITY AND GENDER

Get the data for these figures
  • Statistics rely on imputation of race/ethnicity and gender based on defendant names and addresses. We refer to “gender” throughout while acknowledging necessarily limitations of the imputation process and its inability to capture important subtleties in individuals’ gender identification. A complete description of this process can be found in the ETS methods page. ACS data are from 2015-2019 five-year estimates.

Eviction Hotspots

Eviction filings aren’t spread evenly across cities: a small number of buildings are responsible for a disproportionate share of eviction cases. This pattern, which existed before the pandemic, has continued in 2020 and beyond. We analyzed eviction records in Philadelphia to determine where the most cases are being filed. This is a list of eviction hot spots—the 10 buildings responsible for the most filings—over the course of the last year. We also display the plaintiff name most often listed with a given building in the court filings. In the next section, we map the top 100 hotspots across the county.

Eviction Hotspot data are updated semi-annually.

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Changes in claim amounts

When a landlord files an eviction claim in Philadelphia, we observe the amount they claim the tenant owes in back rent, late fees, and damages. In this figure, we plot the typical (median) amount claimed in eviction filings for each month over the last year. We exclude cases in which the landlord doesn’t make a monetary claim, and we drop months if there were fewer than 10 eviction cases filed. The dashed horizontal line on the plot marks the typical claim on an eviction case filed before the pandemic.

Median Claim Amount by Month

Over the past year, of all eviction claims,

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The geography of eviction filings

Philadelphia County is divided into 384 census tracts. In each of those tracts, we map the number of eviction filings over the last year. If you toggle below you can see these numbers as eviction filing rates—the number of eviction filings divided by the number of renter households in the area—or compared to the typical number of filings in the average year.1 2

  1. Eviction filing data for Philadelphia County were collected by Jonathan Pyle at Philadelphia Legal Assistance. Historical averages cover the years 2016-2019.
  2. Tract-level breakdown of renter race/ethnicity determined using American Community Survey (ACS) estimates for 2015–2019.
  3. Tract-level eviction data are updated more regularly than eviction hotspots, which may result in some disagreement in filing counts. We exclude buildings with fewer than 15 filings, in which case fewer than 100 buildings will be displayed.

On map, we also plot the location of the top 100 eviction hotspots in the county (see above). Hover over the circles to see more information about filings from these locations.3

Get the data for tracts in this figure Get the data for top filers in this figure

The demographics of eviction filings

Eviction filings by neighborhood race/ethnicity

American Community Survey (ACS) data allow us to categorize neighborhoods by their racial/ethnic majority: White, Black, or Other/None.

When you toggle the figure to see data relative to average, comparisons are being drawn—within the same set of neighborhoods defined by racial/ethnic majority—between filings over the last year and average filings in 2016–2019.1

  1. Eviction filing data for Philadelphia County were collected by Jonathan Pyle at Philadelphia Legal Assistance. Historical averages cover the years 2016-2019.

Get the data for this figure

Eviction filings by defendant race/ethnicity and gender

There are often large racial/ethnic and gender disparities in eviction risk. Here, we estimate the demographic characteristics of those filed against for eviction over the last year. We compare to data from the ACS that show the share of renters in the same categories.1

Share of eviction filings

Share of renters

FILINGS OVER THE LAST YEAR BY DEFENDANT RACE/ETHNICITY AND GENDER

Get the data for these figures
  • Statistics rely on imputation of race/ethnicity and gender based on defendant names and addresses. We refer to “gender” throughout while acknowledging necessarily limitations of the imputation process and its inability to capture important subtleties in individuals’ gender identification. A complete description of this process can be found in the ETS methods page. ACS data are from 2015-2019 five-year estimates.