Eviction filings in Fort Worth soar in the last 3 years. What can the city do about it?
What policies can Fort Worth leaders enact to fight skyrocketing eviction filings? Eviction filings in Fort Worth, Texas, have more than doubled between 2020 and 2023, according to a city report published by Eviction Lab. The increase is due to expiring COVID-era renter protections and rising costs of living. Landlords in the city filed just under 46,000 eviction notices in 2023. The Fort Worth area registered more total filings than both Austin and Dallas. Black residents in the area account for 40% of eviction defendants, despite accounting for only a quarter of the city’s renters. The report suggests policy changes such as increasing fees for landlords and providing legal counsel to tenants who receive eviction notices. It also suggests that building more homes for less could be a solution.
Опубликовано : 4 недели назад от Jaime Moore-Carrillo в
Eviction filings in the Fort Worth area have more than doubled between 2020 and 2023, according to an informal city report published Thursday.
The spike, a product of expiring COVID-era renter protections and ballooning costs of living, paints a bleak portrait of a rental market once renowned for its affordability.
Landlords in Fort Worth lodged just under 46,000 eviction notices in 2023, the report found. (Its data, sourced from research group Eviction Lab, includes Tarrant and Denton counties under the Fort Worth umbrella.) The Fort Worth area registered more total filings than both Austin and Dallas.
Fort Worth renters, shielded by pandemic eviction moratoriums and cushioned by rent subsidies, received 19,505 notices to vacate in 2020. The tally crept up a couple thousand the following year before skyrocketing to 42,425 in 2022, as legal protections faded and state support funds dwindled. Eviction filings in the city have outpaced the national average almost every month since.
Black residents in Fort Worth account for 40% of eviction defendants, despite constituting only a quarter of the city’s renters, the study added. Fort Worth women also experience disproportionately high filing rates.
Fort Worth hasn’t escaped the swell in rents sweeping Texas’ booming major cities; nor has it been immune from the trend’s most dire symptoms. Evictions have climbed in tandem with homelessness, which has pierced record levels in recent years (though it has dropped off in 2024, according to the city’s latest estimates).
The city report proposes a roster of policy changes to combat the crisis. Forcing landlords to pay slightly more to submit eviction notices, and guaranteeing legal counsel to tenants who receive them, could reduce both the number of filings and the number of removals. Affording renters more time to pay back overdue rent could also ease the pain.
HB 2127, a state law passed last year banning any and all city or municipal statutes “regulating evictions or otherwise prohibiting, restricting, or delaying evictions,” would complicate tenant-friendly reforms introduced on the city or county level, the report notes.
The regulation further emptied an already limited toolbox available to local leaders. In 2015, lawmakers outlawed local ordinances preventing landlords from discriminating against renters that paid for living costs with government vouchers. Fort Worth on March 19 forbade voucher discrimination for one demographic exempted from the state ban — veterans.
In the meantime, the report advises, policymakers can pursue a timeworn remedy for evictions: building more homes for less.
“Evictions are a symptom of a housing market in which the supply side represented by landlords has great power on account of high demand by renters,” the study notes. “Where there is ample affordable housing available, tenants can have greater market choices and are more likely to find rental housing that meets their income limitations.”