Eviction Rates in Travis County

Texas eviction filings reached new highs during the Covid-19 pandemic. As pandemic aid dollars dry up and emergency orders protecting tenants expire, Texas is experiencing an eviction crisis.

In April 2022, Austin, Dallas, Houston, and Fort Worth ranked among the Top 10 of cities for eviction filings. Soon after city and county emergency orders expired in December 2021, landlords began to file eviction cases. In the four months after the orders expired, landlords filed 2,500 eviction cases. That was more than in the prior 21 months.

Meanwhile, rents shot up more than 20 percent from March 2020 to March 2021, and rose more than 13% from May 2021 to May 2022, while home prices were similarly skyrocketing.

In October 2022, 856 eviction cases were filed in Travis County and 19,654 were filed in Texas overall. Nearly 30% of all eviction cases heard in Texas that month were default judgments, meaning that the tenants did not show up in court and therefore the judge ruled in favor of the landlord without considering the facts of the case.

Texas Housers tracks courts in Texas that do not fulfill their legal obligations to report case data to the state. According to that organization: “It is much more expensive to the individual and collectively to reestablish stable housing after an eviction than it is to avoid the eviction in the first place.”

Tenants may have had a defense that could prevent eviction, but if they don’t show up the landlord wins. That’s why it’s so important for legal services to be accessible and affordable. The core of ACLC’s mission is to make legal services radically more affordable, so that everyone can have access to justice. We charge sliding-scale fees based on our clients' income, even less for eviction defense – just one low flat fee.