WASHINGTON EVICTION FILINGS - DATA
Eviction Research Network, University of California, Berkeley
Built August 15, 2026. Data through April 2026.
https://evictionresearch.net/washington/

FILES

statewide_filings_by_month.csv  (124 rows)
  month              YYYY-MM
  eviction_filings   unlawful-detainer cases filed statewide that month

county_filings_by_month.csv  (4,836 rows)
  Filings by county and month: 39 counties x every month in the window.
  fips, county       county FIPS code and name
  month              YYYY-MM
  eviction_filings   unlawful-detainer cases filed that month
  renter_households  ACS 2020-2024 renter-occupied households

county_filings_by_year.csv  (429 rows)
  months_covered     months of data in that year; a partial final year
                     reports fewer than 12
  filings_per_1000_renter_hh
                     annualized: filings / months * 12 / renters * 1000

county_context_acs_2020_2024.csv  (39 rows)
  Renter share, median rent, median incomes, rent burden, poverty,
  unemployment, vacancy, and renter composition by race and ethnicity.
  Shares are proportions (0-1).

SOURCE

Washington State Office of Civil Legal Aid (OCLA),
https://ocla.wa.gov/reports/other-reports, which compiles monthly
unlawful-detainer case counts from all 39 superior courts. These are the
courts' own counts. Census figures are American Community Survey
2020-2024 five-year estimates.

Every figure and map on the page is drawn by our R package, neighborhood
(https://github.com/evictionresearch/neighborhood), so any of them can be
recreated from these files. The pull and build scripts are available on
request: evictions@berkeley.edu

WHAT THE NUMBERS MEAN, AND DO NOT

- A filing is the start of an eviction case, not its end. These are not
  judgments, notices, or lockouts, and the stages are not interchangeable.
- Rates count filings, not households. A unit filed on repeatedly counts
  each time, so a rate reads as filings per 1,000 renter households per
  year rather than the share of households facing eviction.
- The OCLA feed reports court-side counts only: no defendant identifiers,
  addresses, or filing reasons, so no demographic estimation is possible
  from it.

CITATION

Thomas, Timothy A. (2026). Washington Eviction Filings. Eviction Research
Network, University of California, Berkeley.
https://evictionresearch.net/washington/

These are public records. Use them freely; please cite the source.
