Daniel sits in the dining room at the St. Vincent De Paul Homeless Shelter in Phoenix. She has been here for months after her eviction. She is close to 60, and says this is one of the most difficult chapters of her life.

“It was horrifying. I’ve always offered it for myself and my children,” Daniel said. “Yes, it was tough in many cases, but we’ve made it work all the time, and we can’t do it, especially in this later part of life.

KJZZ agreed not to use Daniel’s last name. Because she is pursuing a new career, a new home.

In late 2023, Daniel was living with his family, but was ready to get his place. She worked in a call center and found something in Phoenix that fit her tight budget. But in the end she found a modest one-bedroom apartment for around $1,000 a month.

A few months later, in early 2024, Daniel’s company reduced and she was fired.

“I don’t know how many hours I spent on the phone trying to get somewhere,” says Daniel.

She began looking for another job, attempting to apply for unemployment insurance, and trying to find a rental assistance program, but nothing happened before the rent was scheduled. She was immediately notified that her landlord had planned to file an eviction lawsuit against her for failing to pay rent.

Knowing that even if Daniel had no income, she would not be able to find another apartment, she cleaned up what she could and then headed to the shelter for the first time in her life.

“My son kept my belongings, my photos, my photo albums, all of that,” says Daniel. “But other than that, everything else is gone.”

Daniel is not alone. Maricopa County Landlords raised eviction Record-breaking 87,130 times in 2024 – It’s a daily submission of over 238 evictions. There are several factors driving the trend. And with the growing number of tenants affected, evictions can take a serious cost.

“Now, this is the biggest type of civil matter we see,” says Pambridge, director of litigation and advocacy at Community Legal Services, a low-income Arizona nonprofit law firm.

Bridge said rent prices in Phoenix have risen out of reach of many low-income families. And her clients often tell her they were unexpectedly behind.

“They were given notices of increased rent, but they can’t afford it,” Bridge said. “Even so, there’s nowhere else to move.”

The decision in the Maricopa County eviction case reveals how quickly rent prices have risen. In 2024, tenants owed an average of $3,385 after their eviction, according to court records. That’s almost twice the average unpaid $1,702 in 2014, since the eviction incident just 10 years ago.

Harvard University Housing Research Center Report 52% of Maricopa County renters are currently at the expense. This means that you spend more than 30% of your income on rent. Approximately 26% of tenants in the county face severe costs and spend more than half of their income on housing.

Part of the reason rents have risen so quickly in Maricopa County is due to increased demand: new construction Metro Phoenix has acquired residents so they are not in keeping pace. Fast population growth also explains part of the rise in eviction applications. Currently, there are more tenants in Maricopa County than they were a few years ago.

However, the rate of evictions has also risen.

“The eviction rate in Phoenix is ​​very high,” said Lola Stojanovic, a research specialist at Princeton University’s Eviction Institute.

Eviction Lab Data This shows that 14 of Maricopa County’s 100 rental households were given to them last year.

“This is almost twice the national average we track across sites,” Stojanovic said.

Many cities across the country face housing shortages and high costs. Few people have an eviction rate as high as 14% in Phoenix, Stojanovic said. For example, in the infamous and expensive New York City, the eviction rate last year was 5%.

The competition was dramatically slowed nationwide in 2020 at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, cases have been steadily increasing since the suspension of public health emergency evictions was lifted. Nationally, eviction applications are now approaching pre-pandemic levels. But in Maricopa County, filing has already spiked 36% higher than the pre-pandemic average, Stojanovic said.

“This isn’t even,” Stojanovic said. “I think a lot of that also depends on laws and landlord-friendly laws and tenant-friendly laws.”

Stojanovic said Arizona has a very fast legal process for evictions. After rent is unpaid, the landlord must give him a five-day notice before applying for eviction. According to the state, about half of the state needs more time. Legal Services Corporation datafederally funded civil law aid agency.

And Stojanovic said that legal applications could have consequences.

“If that filing is made, that’s what we sometimes call ‘scarlete’.

In 2022, Arizona Legislature passed a law that allowed judges to either grant tenants support or agree to seal the case after the landlord has issued the sentence if the judge pays the amount that the tenant pays before the judge makes an outstanding judgment. In 2024, about a third of the Maricopa County eviction cases were sealed.

However, in most cases, if not sealed, eviction records can make it more difficult for tenants to secure new homes.

And the effects of evictions could exceed legal and economic impacts, Stojanovic said.

“You can see that there is a high percentage of mental health issues. You see children from fired families getting worse in school. You are eviction and all causes mortality rates grow over time,” Stojanovic said.

Stojanovic said evictions often come after a cascade of other very stressful life events, such as Danielle’s layoffs. Last year, in records from court hearings from more than 87,000 eviction cases in Maricopa County, tenants ended the relationship between cancer, injuries, reduced work hours and reasons for falling behind in rent.

Stojanovic said the last eviction rate in Maricopa County was in the years just before the Great Recession. She says today’s figures are a symptom of a new era of widespread economic hardships.

Facing homelessness after her eviction, Daniel said she saw that firsthand. From a lack of affordable housing to lack of resources to renters getting behind, to the quick eviction process, she said it won’t take long to slip through the Arizona safety net.

“It’s not just that you don’t want to do something like that,” Daniel said. “There are a lot of factors involved.”

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