Las Vegas has one of the highest eviction rates in the country: Princeton Lab

Grace Hartley, a research specialist with the Eviction Lab, said they are only tracking 34 metro areas and the ranking is not per capita.

“The population of (Clark County) has the seventh-highest rate in terms of pure filing counts,” she said. “And that’s more than a lot of the states we track.”

Since March 2020, there have been 190,133 filings in the county, which is a 21 percent increase from pre-pandemic levels, and so far this year there have been 51,782 filings, which is a 42 percent increase. In the past month, there have been 4,041 filings, which is a 25 percent increase from normal pre-pandemic levels.

There are about 370,204 renter households in Clark County, and the typical rent is $1,325 a month. Landlords have to provide their tenants seven days notice and file a $71 filing fee in the courts, which are some of the lowest and quickest numbers of any of the city’s tracked according to Eviction Lab. Hartley said these are two common markers for a city with high eviction rates.

“So basically tenant-friendly regulation says yes to things like rent control, higher filing fees, giving tenants more time to pay,” she said.

Heavy toll

Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., who represents Nevada’s 1st District which includes urban areas south of Las Vegas, Henderson and Boulder City, said high eviction rates take a heavy toll on any local community in a number of ways.

“Lower income families living paycheck to paycheck and seniors on fixed incomes often are one financial crisis away from not being able to pay their rent and being evicted,” she said. “I have co-sponsored legislation to increase the number of federal housing vouchers Southern Nevada receives to help those at risk of eviction. Other metropolitan areas our size receive three or four times the number of housing vouchers we do. Congress must address this inequity.”

Eviction Lab’s data comes from the Las Vegas Justice Court, North Las Vegas Justice Court and the Henderson Justice Court along with the Supreme Court of Nevada’s Annual Report to account for Clark County’s jurisdiction as well.

Evictions in Clark County hit a high-water mark in December 2022 as filings were up 82 percent from the pre-COVID average, and the lab’s website explained the local market has been on a roller coaster like much of the country the past few years.

“Eviction filings in Las Vegas fell sharply by March 2020. The state of Nevada put in place a moratorium on eviction proceedings from late-March until mid-October 2020. After the expiration of these protections, eviction filings rose. The state then implemented a second moratorium in December 2020 for tenants who affirmed that they had been financially affected by COVID-19 or would be made homeless by eviction. Those protections expired at the end of May 2021.”

In June last year, Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo vetoed Senate Bill 335, which would have halted evictions for up to 60 days for renters who had a pending application on the table for rental assistance. This was a bill that included similar protections as a 2021 Nevada law.

Eviction Lab thinks its data for Clark County could be an “undercount” as well, as its numbers are lower than recent figures in the Supreme Court of Nevada’s Annual Report for 2023. Eviction Lab also noted there is a delay in accessing eviction filings, which is not common for most cities they track.

Contact Patrick Blennerhassett at pblennerhassett@reviewjournal.com.