TX Observer: “Miguel Valencia has a court date on July 29. He’s facing eviction from his home in Garland, just northeast of Dallas. He’s two months behind on the rent for his house, which has been in disrepair due to foundation problems since he moved there in 2019.
After about a year of reporting the problems—cracks in the walls, doors unable to close—Valencia’s building management company agreed to fix the issues. But Valencia, along with his mother and younger brother who live with him, couldn’t be onsite during the renovations, so they were hit with a non-renewal notice. Valencia had nowhere to go, so the company agreed to let the family stay for two more months with the caveat that rent would go up by $500 per month.
“I can’t pay what they’re asking for and then still have enough money to move,” Valencia said. “They just made it really difficult for me. I have no credit. They just put that eviction on my record, so it made it even hard for me to find another place for my family.”
Evictions are at or above pre-pandemic levels in the state’s largest cities, according to data from Eviction Lab, which tracks weekly evictions in 31 cities and six states across the U.S. (Eviction Lab does not track data for San Antonio). Houston ranks second among the cities the lab tracks, behind New York City. Since the start of the pandemic, the South Texas city has seen more than 101,000 eviction filings. The raw numbers are stark, but it’s worth noting that evictions are naturally higher in more populous cities.
Dallas and Fort Worth are also near the top of the nationwide list for the number of evictions, with landlords in each filing more than 53,000 eviction claims since March 2020. Austin—the city with the most robust renter protections—had a fraction of what the other cities did, with just 7,616 filings in the same time period. Even so, evictions in the state capital crested pre-pandemic levels at the beginning of this year. These numbers are likely an undercount, as the data show only those cases where landlords took evictions to court. Cases in which tenants immediately complied with a written notice to vacate don’t make it into these final numbers.
These rising evictions are a major threat to Texas’ renters, as available rental properties dwindle and rent prices spike. In Houston, median rent for a one-bedroom apartment has gone up 15 percent in the past year—the mildest price increase of all of the largest Texas cities. In Austin, the typical renter is paying nearly 30 percent more for a one-bedroom apartment than they were a year ago, about a $350 hit to their budget each month, according to rental company Zumper.”