The Suburbanization of Eviction: Increasing Displacement and Inequality Within American Suburbs

Abstract

The suburbanization of poverty in the United States coincided with surging housing costs and growing rent burdens. Although much of the existing literature on eviction focuses on housing insecurity and displacement in cities, there is good reason to suspect that it has become an equally common phenomenon in the suburbs. This study evaluates changes in the frequency of urban and suburban evictions over time across seventy-four large metropolitan areas. Multilevel models show that the number of suburban evictions has steadily risen over time, even as urban evictions have been stable. The cases of Cleveland, Seattle, and Tampa demonstrate that the increase in suburban evictions is concentrated in pockets of the suburbs. Additional analyses reveal large geographic and racial inequalities in suburban displacement.