Most evictions start with a court filing, and many tenants face it without a lawyer while landlords usually have one. Hearings can last minutes. An eviction record can follow a person for years and make it hard to rent again, pushing families into worse housing or onto the street.
The racial gap is large. A 2023 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, using national data, found that Black Americans made up 18.6 percent of renters but 51.1 percent of people facing eviction filings. Sociologist Matthew Desmond's book Evicted, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2017, showed how eviction drives poverty rather than only reflecting it.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government paused many evictions. The Supreme Court ended the CDC's moratorium in August 2021. Since then, cities and states including New York City, San Francisco and Washington State have adopted right-to-counsel laws that guarantee tenants a lawyer. Eviction matters because housing stability is the base for work, school and health.