Evictions in Dallas have reached their highest levels in seven years.
Dallas County Sheriff Deputy Josue Capetillo said evictions have “actually doubled, almost tripled these last couple months.”
“And the numbers show how many we’ve been getting. It has to do with a lot of things,” he continued. “Some people can’t find help; some people can’t find jobs. Some people are waiting for help from rental relief and they couldn’t get it.”
In September, Dallas County landlords filed 4,045 eviction notices — the third-highest filing total during a single month in at least five years, according to data provided by the Dallas-based Child Action Poverty Lab.
The highest one-month eviction filing total in the last five years occurred in August, with 4,355 evictions. From January to September this year, 32,890 total evictions have been filed in Dallas County, averaging 135 filings per day.
In the same time frame, Tarrant County had 24,399 filings, while Denton County had 6,850 and Collin County had 5,661.
Deputy Capetillo said it can be difficult to enforce evictions while making sure both the landlord and the tenant are following the law.
“You know, in these kinds of cases, I can’t sit and be on the landlord’s side. I can’t sit and be on the tenant’s side because both of them have their reasons,” he said. “But I have to go by what the judge ordered.”
Mark Melton, an attorney with the Dallas Eviction Advocacy Center, said the rise in evictions is probably due to several factors, including inflation, rent increasing during lease renewals, and landlords choosing not to accept rent relief money from the government, which they are legally allowed to do.
“The problem is that there are no cheaper apartments for people to just go move into,” Melton said. “I expect things to get much, much worse.”
Eviction filings have traditionally followed a seasonal pattern — rising in January, falling in the spring, then rising again in the summer and dropping during autumn.
However, that pattern was “disrupted” by the COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying eviction moratorium protections, according to Ashley Flores, senior director at the Child Poverty Action Lab.
“We expected that they would start to normalize, that they would climb back up,” she said. “I think it’s unclear what the new normal is.”
The Child Poverty Action Lab compares eviction data to elementary school attendance zones to examine the impact of housing instability on the education of children.
Throughout the past three months, the highest number of eviction filings occurred near Cochran Elementary in west Oak Cliff (146 filings per 1,000 renters), Starks Elementary in east Oak Cliff (143 filings), and Larry G. Smith Elementary in Mesquite (137 filings).