Danielle sits in the dining hall of a St. Vincent De Paul homeless shelter in Phoenix. She’s been staying here for months following an eviction. She’s nearly 60 and says this has been one of the hardest chapters of her life.

“It’s been horrible; I’ve always provided for myself and my kids,” Danielle said. “Yes, it was tough a lot of times, but we always made it work. And not to be able to do that, especially at this late phase in life, you beat up on yourself.”

KJZZ agreed not use Danielle’s last name because she’s pursuing a new career, new housing and, as she puts it, “you don’t run around the street saying, ‘Oh, I’m homeless.’”

Hear Katherine Davis-Young on The Show with host Sam Dingman

Listen • 5:33

In late 2023, Danielle was living with a family member but was ready to get her own place. She had a job at a call center, and finding something in Phoenix that fit her tight budget was hard. But finally, she found a modest one-bedroom apartment for about $1,000 a month.

A few months later, in early 2024, Danielle’s company downsized, and she was laid off.

“I can’t tell you how many hours I spent on the phone trying to get somewhere,” Danielle says.

She started looking for another job, tried filing for unemployment insurance and tried finding rental assistance programs, but nothing came through before rent was due. She quickly received notice that her landlord planned to file an eviction case against her for non-payment of rent.

With no income, Danielle knew she wouldn’t find another apartment, so she packed up what she could and, for the first time in her life, she headed to a shelter.

“My son stored my personal belongings, my pictures, my photo albums, all that kind of stuff,” Danielle says. “But other than that, everything else was gone.”

Christina Van Otterloo/KJZZ

Danielle is far from alone. Maricopa County landlords filed for eviction a record-breaking 87,130 times in 2024 – that’s more than 238 eviction filings every day. There are multiple factors driving the trend. And for the growing number of renters impacted, eviction can take a serious toll.

“Now, by far it is the biggest type of civil issue that we see,” said Pam Bridge, director of litigation and advocacy with Community Legal Services, a nonprofit law firm for low-income Arizonans.

Bridge said Phoenix rent prices have climbed out of reach for many low-income families. And her clients often tell her they unexpectedly fell behind.

“They were given notice of a rent increase, and they can’t afford it,” Bridge said. “And yet, there’s nowhere for them to move to.”

Judgments in Maricopa County eviction cases reveal how quickly rent prices have climbed. In 2024, tenants owed $3,385 on average after an eviction, according to court records. That’s nearly double the $1,702 that was owed, on average, from eviction cases just a decade earlier, in 2014.

The Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University reports 52% of renters in Maricopa County are now cost burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on rent. About 26% of renters in the county face severe cost burden, spending more than half of their earnings on housing.

Part of the reason rents have risen so fast in Maricopa County is because of increasing demand: new construction hasn’t kept pace as metro Phoenix gained residents. Fast population growth also explains some of the increase in eviction filings. There are more renters now in Maricopa County than there were even a few years ago.

But the rate of evictions is rising, too.

“Phoenix’s eviction rate is extremely high,” said Lorae Stojanovic, a research specialist with the Eviction Lab at Princeton University.

Eviction Lab data shows 14 out of every 100 rental households in Maricopa County last year had an eviction filed against them.

“That's nearly double our national average that we track across sites,” Stojanovic said.

Many cities nationwide are facing housing shortages and high costs. Few have eviction rates as high as Phoenix’s 14%, Stojanovic said. In notoriously expensive New York City, for example, the eviction rate last year was 5%, according to the Eviction Lab.

Evictions slowed dramatically nationwide in 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. But cases have been steadily increasing since public health emergency eviction moratoriums were lifted. Nationwide, eviction filings are now approaching pre-pandemic levels. But in Maricopa County, filings have already soared 36% higher than pre-pandemic averages, Stojanovic said.

“This isn't uniform,” Stojanovic said. “I think a lot of it also depends on legislation and landlord-friendly versus tenant-friendly laws.”

Stojanovic said Arizona has a very fast legal process for evictions. After rent goes unpaid, a landlord needs to give just five days notice before filing for eviction. About half of states require more time, according to data from the Legal Services Corporation, a federally funded civil legal assistance organization.

And, Stojanovic said, just that legal filing can have consequences.

“Once that filing is made, that's what we sometimes call the ‘Scarlet E’ because that does stay on your record,” Stojanovic said.

In 2022, the Arizona Legislature passed a law allowing eviction cases to be automatically sealed in some cases when tenants pay the amount due before the judge renders a verdict for non-payment, the judge rules in the tenant’s favor, or the landlord agrees to vacate and seal the case after the judgment is entered. In 2024, about a third of Maricopa County’s eviction cases were sealed.

But in the majority of cases, which are not sealed, a record of eviction can make it more difficult for a renter to secure new housing.

And the effect of an eviction can go beyond legal and financial impacts, Stojanovic said.

“You see higher rates of issues with mental health. You see children in evicted families do worse in school. You see in evictions, even all-cause mortality grows with time,” Stojanovic said.

Stojanovic said eviction often comes after a cascade of other extremely stressful life events, like Danielle’s layoff. In recordings from court hearings from the more than 87,000 eviction cases in Maricopa County last year, tenants cite cancer, injuries, reduced hours at work and ended relationships among reasons for falling behind on rent.

Stojanovic said the last time eviction rates climbed so fast in Maricopa County was in the years just before the Great Recession. Today’s numbers, she said, are a symptom of a new era of widespread economic hardship.

Danielle, who faced homelessness after her eviction, said she’s seen that firsthand. From a lack of affordable housing, to a lack of resources for renters falling behind and a swift eviction process, she said it doesn’t take long to slip through Arizona’s safety net.

“It’s not just that we don’t want to do anything for ourselves or anything like that,” Danielle said. “There’s a lot of factors involved.”