Overview

Evictions are devastating events that can lead to forced displacement, homelessness, financial instability, negative health outcomes, and long-term, harmful impacts on a household's future. Research shows that eviction disproportionately impacts vulnerable populations, especially Black women and children, exacerbating existing inequalities. Beyond immediate displacement, evictions can have lasting consequences by damaging credit, limiting future housing options, disrupting employment and education, and causing significant emotional trauma and stress.

Oregon renters face some of the highest eviction rates in the country. While eviction counts slowed during the pandemic through local, state, and federal moratoriums, over 16,000 Oregon renting households still experienced an eviction filing (March 2020 to July 2022). Since the end of the pandemic (August 2022 to March 2024), over 33,000 renting households have faced eviction with Black households facing the highest rates of any group.

In collaboration with Portland State University's Evicted in Oregon team, UC Berkeley's Eviction Research Network and the Urban Displacement Project analyzed available Oregon eviction filings in the state of Oregon from 2017 to 2024. Our goal for this study is to highlight the racial disparity in evictions. Case filings do not hold demographic information, therefore, we use a racial estimation technique commonly used in research and legal cases to estimate race (see our methodology page for more information on this process). We examine the state's eviction filing spatial patterns; trends over time; racial disparities; and related neighborhood rental market, income, and racial dynamics. We end with some explanations for why these trends exist.

Evictions are not a single event. The process starts with a landlord's notice to evict a tenant, which may proceed to eviction court (i.e., eviction filing) if the tenant can not pay back rent or leave. At court, the tenant may be able to negotiate an agreement, move to trial, or end with a judgment of eviction and even a lockout by the sheriff. In few cases households stay.

We consider a household to be displaced by an eviction if they move at any point of the process, which is a difficult number to measure. Notices are not administratively collected and this study only examines cases that went to court. Because a household may leave prior to a filing, the numbers presented here are an under-count of households that have been displaced by eviction. For a detailed explanation and diagram about the eviction process in Oregon, visit the Evicted in Oregon FAQ page on eviction.

What we found in the data demonstrates that without significant policy interventions, racial disparities and overall housing precarity will likely persist and worsen, exacerbating exisitng inequities.

Summary of findings

• 1 in 24 renting households experienced an eviction filing (4.2%)
• 1 in 11 Black households (9.1%)
• 1 in 19 Latine households (5.3%)
• 1 in 31 “Other Group” (Asian, mixed-race, Indigenous, MENA, and other racial/ethnic groups) (3.2%) and
• 1 in 26 White households (3.9%) experienced an eviction filing

• Multnomah, Crook, Washington, and Klamath Counties have the highest filing rates in the state.
• Between the end of the CDC moratorium in June 2021 to the first post-moratoria peak of October 2022, eviction filings increased by 533% (300 to 1900 cases).
• The introduction of House Bill 2001 in April 2023 cut filings by 54%, but cases rapidly increased by 81% as of August 2023.
• Since August of 2022, Oregon has been evicting more renters on a monthly basis than it ever has in its history.
• March 2024 eviction counts were 70% above historical average, the highest record in the state's history.

Findings

Spatial patterns

The map above shows the yearly average eviction filing rate (filings divided by renter households) for each county and census tract (a loose proxy for neighborhoods) for a given time. For example, the "Post-Pandemic" button shows the yearly average eviction rate between October 2022 to March 2024 while the "All" button shows the yearly average eviction rate from January 2017 to March 2024.

The map begins with County filings rates in the last 12 months and you can zoom into the map to see the neighborhood (tract) filing rates. The color bar on the upper left shows the minimum and maximum rate for counties or tracts depending on the zoom level. You can use the search bar in the upper right hand corner to type in an address, place, or county name to zoom to that location and see local rate information.

At the county level Multnomah (purple), Crook (orange), Washington, and Klamath counties (dark tan) had the highest post-pandemic eviction rates in the state in the past 12 months (April 2023 to March 2024). Zooming in to the tract layer near Portland shows several neighborhoods in purple (23% to 32%) where 1 in 5 to 1 in 3 renting households faced eviction in a year. Several rural census tracts also had high eviction rates above 10% such as in Klamath Falls and Josephine County (south side of the state) and Lane County (west side of the state) with several tracts having rates between 5% and 9%. These trends suggest that eviction is not just an urban issue.

Trends over time

Oregon monthly eviction case count is the highest in its history

The graph below shows the number of circuit court filings per county since 2019 (Justice Court filings are unavailable at this time). Before the pandemic, there were roughly 1,200 filings per month with seasonal spikes in January and July. Federal and, more so, state moratoria helped reduce evictions down to 100 filings per month at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. But, by the end of the federal CDC moratorium in July 2021, cases increased to over 700 per month and then sharply rose after February 2022. By April 2022, only one of four state Senate Bills (891) intended to curb evictions remained. By its end in June 2022, counts rapidly increased. By October 2022, Oregon reached its first peak of over 2,000 cases in a single month. In April 2023, HB 2001 was introduced, temporarily stalling counts but eventually began increasing again resulting in the number of cases being doubled by the beginning of 2024. The state reached the highest ever monthly case count in January 2024 with 2,098 cases.

Note: these trends are under-counts because data is missing for 13 Justice Court counties.

The plot below compares current eviction counts in the last 24 months to pre-pandemic monthly filing counts for 2019. Only four months were below historical average cases while the remaining 21 months were between 7% and 70% above historical average. Starting in June 2022, Oregon eviction counts exceeded historical trends. April 2023 had one of the few below average months when HB 2001 was passed. However, counts quickly climbed above average in the following months. March 2024 broke all records resting at 70% above average.

Eviction is both an urban and rural problem

The statewide eviction rate was 4% (1 in 25 renter households) between April 2023 to March 2024 as compared to 3% in 2019 (1 in 33 renter households). The table below shows the county filing trends where the mostly urban Multnomah County and mostly rural Klamath County have rates at 6.0% and 4.1%. Almost all counties have relatively steady monthly counts, with a few increasing over time. In the past eight years, roughly 1 in 4 Multnomah renter households faced eviction while over 1 in 3 Klamath County renter households faced eviction.

Racial Disparities in Eviction

Below we show the racial disparities in evictions for the state. Because court cases do not provide demographics, we estimate race and ethnicity using an imputation method called fully Bayesian Improved Surname Geocoding (fBISG). In short, fBISG estimates whether someone is of a certain race based on their last name and the racial composition of where they live. A caveat to this method is that it under-estimates individuals who are Black and over-estimates individuals to be White—meaning these estimates are conservative and there are likely more evictions among Black renters than what is reported here.

Black Renters Have Been Hit Hardest

Racial and ethnic disparities in eviction are high in Oregon due to decades of discrimination and economic inequality among households of color. In the past 12 months, Black eviction rates are the highest they've been in the state's history. Prior to the pandemic, eviction rates for most groups rested just under 3% while Black eviction rates were just under 5%. All rates decreased during the pandemic and started to climb in the middle of 2021. In the beginning of 2022, group rates started to diverge with White and Other group rates falling below the state average and Black and Latinx rates exceeding the state average. Over the past 24 months, Black rates have mostly been twice as high as the state average. By the beginning of 2024, Black renters received filings 125% more than the state rate and Latinx renters received cases 40% more than the state rate.

High rates of eviction among Black and Latinx households is well documented in research and income does not fully explain these racial disparities. Notably, Black households earning over $80,000 per year still had a higher eviction risk than White households earning under $20,000 per year. Furthermore, neighborhood racial composition is a high predictor of eviction, suggesting racial discrimination is at play. Longstanding discriminatory housing policies and practices have contributed to the current disparities where residential segregation, discriminatory lending, and barriers to homeownership have made Black families more vulnerable to eviction.

What Type of Neighborhoods See More Evictions?

Below we evaluate eviction trends across different neighborhood racial and ethnic compositions, percent low-income, and rent in the state. We found that evictions happen most often in communities with more racial diversity and more low-income renters but are evenly distributed across low, medium, and high rent areas.

Eviction rates are highest in more diverse neighborhoods.

The graph below shows the breakdown of eviction rates by race and ethnicity in different racial and ethnic majority neighborhoods. These racial and ethnic majority neighborhoods are categorized by the groups that have more than a 10% composition in the census tract. For example, "Mostly White" means these neighborhoods have more than a 10% share of White renters while all other groups are below 10%. "Diverse" means four or more groups are over 10%.

The first (red) column shows the overall eviction rate across different neighborhood types. Diverse neighborhoods have the highest eviction rates at 75 cases per 1,000 renters followed by "3 Group Mixed" (45) and "Latinx-White" (39). Mostly White neighborhoods had the lowest eviction rate except for Black renters who had 72 evictions per 1,000 Black households.

Black renters (second column) have the highest rates of eviction of any group across all neighborhood types followed by Latinx renters. White renters had the third highest while "Other groups" had the lowest. The highest rates occurred in Diverse neighborhoods with 109 filings per 1,000 Black renters followed by Latinx-White (86), "3 Group Mixed" (85), and Black-White (60) majority neighborhoods. Their rates were between 38% and 165% higher than White rates and in many cases over 200% higher than "Other" groups.

We also find that eviction rates are higher in poorer neighborhoods. The graph below compares eviction rates to the percent of households making less than 80% of the county median income in a community (a HUD defined monetary threshold that allows renters to start qualifying for housing and social service assistance). Overall and across all racial groups, neighborhoods with at least a share of 30% low-income renters saw higher rates of eviction. Black renters continue to have the highest rates among all groups with 83 to 98 filings per 1,000 Black renters in neighborhoods with more than 30% low-income and 53 filings in 10% to 29%. Latinx renters had the second highest rates ranging from 22 to 55 filings per 1,000 Latinx renters. White come in third (9 to 41) and "Other" groups come in last.

Finally, the graph below shows a breakdown of different neighborhoods by median rent and eviction filings. In other states, low-rent neighborhoods tend to see the highest rates. However, that's not the case in Oregon. Overall rates are mostly similar across all median rent neighborhoods ranging from 32 to 42 cases per 1,000 renters - the lowest rate being in the lowest rent neighborhoods.

Black households have higher eviction rates than any other group. The highest rate occurring for Black renters is in lower rent neighborhoods (109 cases) followed by higher and highest rent neighborhoods (87 and 68). Other racial groups follow similar patterns as seen in earlier graphs where Latinx renters have the second highest rates followed by White and "Other groups."

Why Do These Trends Exist?

There are severe racial disparities in eviction where Black and Latinx renters face the highest risk of being forced out of their homes. These disparities are related to legacies of economic and social discrimination. Today, increasing eviction rates coincide with the lack of affordable housing, inflation, and rapid increase in rent over the past decade. Rent has increased across low to high income neighborhoods, limiting affordable options for middle to low-income earners. Even the slightest increase can add a significant economic burden on a household, forcing them to make a difficult choice to either pay for food, childcare, healthcare, or shelter.

Racial disparities in housing stability are rooted in a long history of discriminatory policies and practices that have limited access to ownership and affordable housing for communities of color, particularly Black households. In the early 1900s, laws were established to protect property values, particularly for White households. These laws used race as a determinant factor on who could get loans and where investments were made. In tandem with other social and legal discriminatory practices, these events made it difficult for households of color to participate in the growth of the middle class, forcing them to live in segregated spaces, and ultimately leading to a massive home-ownership and wealth disparity between them and White families. This disparity not only disrupts the lives of Black and Latinx families, leading to homelessness and adverse health outcomes but also undermines community cohesion and economic mobility, further entrenching systemic inequities rooted in historical and ongoing discrimination.

The data above reveals that evictions are concentrated in the most diverse, moderately priced, and low-income neighborhoods, with Black and Latinx households bearing the brunt of this crisis. Increasing eviction rates coinciding with the lack of affordable housing, inflation, and housing cost burden suggest that the state may see even more cases in the coming months. Without significant policy interventions, racial disparities will likely persist and worsen, exacerbating existing inequities.