Cost of Eviction Calculator

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, an average of 3.6 million evictions were filed annually between 2000 and 2016. When the pandemic struck, 47.5% of renter households were spending at least 30% of their income on rent, and many low-income households were spending more than 50% of their income on rent. Pandemic-related job and wage loss have fueled the eviction crisis as many households are behind on rent. In 2020, one in four renters had no or slight confidence they could pay next month’s rent on time and another one in four renters had only moderate confidence they could do so. Frequently, there are racial and gender disparities in facing the threat of eviction. However, eviction does not only affect members of the household facing eviction; the community at large also feels the costs of the eviction.

The eviction crisis has grave consequences for community health, economic development, and social well-being, but eviction costs are often obscure. i4J’s Cost of Eviction Calculator empowers advocates to leverage local and national data to demonstrate the number of people at risk of eviction in their community, measure the social and economic eviction-related costs of providing services, and suggests eviction-prevention policies.

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Calculator was modified to enable users to estimate the number of renters at risk of eviction and the community cost of COVID-19 evictions. The Calculator was a finalist in the Georgetown IronTech Lawyer Competition, an international, technology-based, access-to-justice competition in March 2020, and has since been user-tested and redesigned to be a more usable, useful, and stronger advocacy tool. It has been featured by The New York Times, CBS News, the Associated Press, Shelterforce Magazine, Arizona Public Media, the Arizona Star, the Arizona Republic, KJZZ, and Buffalo News.

Visit: Cost of Eviction Calculator

View Project Brief: Cost of Eviction Calculator Project Brief

November 19, 2020: Millions of renter households could be at risk of eviction this winter due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic fallout. Without federal intervention, this flood of evictions will disrupt their lives and cause severe harm to their economic, social, mental, and physical well-being. These evictions will also trigger a wave of unsustainable downstream costs that will further strain the budgets of public health and social service systems.

This report, a collaboration between NLIHC and Innovation for Justice (i4J), highlights some of the public costs of eviction-related homelessness that the United States will incur if we do not provide adequate rental assistance and eviction protection. A significant share of evicted renters is likely to need services, including shelter and emergency medical care, that require extensive financial resources. And families who lose their homes are at higher risk of encountering the child welfare and juvenile delinquency systems, which also require significant resources. These costs are in addition to the well-documented personal costs of eviction on individuals and the costs to landlords of unpaid rent.

Report: Costs of Covid-19 Evictions Report