Las Vegas Tops Nation as Eviction Crisis Spreads

Filings in some cities more than doubled in 2022 with pandemic protections ending. Tenant advocates fear rising rents will only make it worse

- MICHAEL SCOTT DAVIDSON

ON A TUESDAY AFTERNOON IN MARCH, HOLLY Harris slid onto a long wooden bench inside a downtown Las Vegas courtroom. Cradling a colorful stack of papers, she braced for what seemed inevitable.

A hearing officer would soon decide whether to evict the 31-year-old and her four children from their apartment. Outside, in the family's silver minivan, her mother watched two of her babies as Harris flipped through the pages of eviction notices, maintenance requests and paystubs documenting the most recent months of her tenancy.

Things had started falling apart in October, when, overwhelmed by anxiety and depression, Harris found simple tasks, like combing her hair, to be insurmountable. Feeling broken, she took three months of unpaid leave from her job as a cardiovascular technician. But it wasn't until December that the local housing authority increased her monthly rental assistance to cover the loss of income, and Harris soon found an eviction notice taped to her door, demanding the $458 she missed in November.

Even after returning to work that January, Harris was unable to come up with what she owed. Cashstrapped after paying for groceries and other bills, particularly as inflation drove up the cost of almost everything, she instead spent the following months researching eviction laws and preparing for the worst. "I feel like the system is failing me right now," she tells Newsweek.

Following two years of temporary bans and rental assistance programs prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic, evictions skyrocketed across the United States in 2022. Court filings rose by double- or triple-digit percentages in 32 metro areas tracked by Eviction Lab, a research group at Princeton University. Overall, 14 cities saw more  filings than would have been normal before the pandemic, with Las Vegas leading the pack.