Danielle is nearly 60 and homeless for the first time after losing her job and then her apartment last year. She describes this as one of the most difficult periods of her life.
“I’ve always provided for myself and my kids,” Danielle said. “Not to be able to do that, especially at this late phase in life, you beat up on yourself.”
But when she talks about this traumatic experience, she doesn’t really blame the landlords that brought the eviction case against her. Her frustration comes out when she’s talking about those few weeks between missing rent and walking into a homeless shelter.
“There’s waiting lists; there’s missed phone calls,” Danielle said. “You leave messages for people; they don’t call you back. The process sucks, basically.”
KJZZ agreed not to use Danielle’s last name because she is pursuing a new career and new housing, and she is worried about the stigma that comes with eviction and homelessness.
That stigma, Danielle said, is unfair. She said she found herself short on cash one month through no fault of her own and was persistent in trying to get unemployment insurance or rental assistance – anything to avoid becoming homeless.
“I can’t tell you how many hours I spent on the phone trying to get somewhere,” Danielle said.
But she feels like she slipped right through Arizona’s safety net.
Danielle is not alone. Maricopa County had 87,130 eviction filings in 2024 – an all-time record. According to the Eviction Lab at Princeton University, that means about 14% of rental households in the county had an eviction filed against them last year – the highest the county’s eviction rate has been since the years leading up to the Great Recession, and nearly double the current national average eviction rate of 8%.
And while elected officials, affordable housing advocates and those in the residential rental industry agree that the rise in eviction cases is a problem, not everyone agrees on how to solve it.
“Evictions are the worst case, last case scenario,” said Courtney Gilstrap LeVinus, CEO of the Arizona Multihousing Association, a landlord trade group.
LeVinus said the main driver of the trend is a supply and demand imbalance.
“Evictions really are a symptom of a larger issue and that is a lack of housing, and certainly a lack of affordable and workforce housing,” LeVinus said.
That shortage leaves a lot of people paying more than they can afford, and sometimes falling behind, LeVinus said.
According to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, 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.
City, county and state officials have made major investments in the last few years to boost housing supply. And in a deeply divided state Legislature last year, when Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed dozens of bills, housing was one rare area of agreement. Several bills to alleviate the state’s affordable housing shortage were passed and signed into law.
In fact, rent prices in Phoenix actually decreased slightly last year amid a boom in construction, according to analysis from Apartment List.
Still, eviction filings increased.
Those who work closely on the issue of eviction say while housing affordability is one piece of the eviction problem, there’s another important factor, too.
“Arizona has one of the shortest processes for evictions, and I absolutely believe that leads to a rise in evictions,” said Pam Bridge with Community Legal Services, a nonprofit law firm for low-income Arizonans.
The whole legal process from missing payment to being removed from your rental in Arizona can happen in as little as 17 days, according to the Arizona Supreme Court. Bridge said that leaves her clients scrambling.
“We have a short process from the time when a tenant gets a notice, to the time of their eviction hearing, to actually they’re locked out. And during that time is when a tenant is trying to look for resources, talk to family members, come up with rent,” Bridge said.
Danielle, who became homeless after her eviction, said this was one of the most frustrating aspects of her experience. When asked if more time might have allowed her to avoid becoming homeless, she gave a resounding “yes.”
But on this issue, lawmakers can’t seem to agree.
Democratic state Sen. Analise Ortiz this year introduced a bill, SB1173, to slow Arizona’s eviction court process, which she also said is too fast.
“It sets people up for failure, but it is also set up to put a huge drain on our social services and safety nets,” Ortiz said.
After a tenant misses rent, a landlord has to give five days’ notice before filing for eviction. About half of states require more notice, according to data from the Legal Services Corporation, a federally funded civil legal assistance organization. Ortiz’s bill would extend that part of Arizona’s eviction process to 15 days.
The bill wasn’t given a hearing. The Republican chair of the committee to which the bill was assigned declined to comment on why.
But LeVinus said drawing out the evictions timeline would be hard on landlords. Evictions are already costly, she said, and if a tenant can’t pay, slowing down the process before they’re evicted would just add to those costs.
“There’s missed rents, court fees, attorney fees, process serving fees,” LeVinus said. “At the end of the day, the other bills for the owner don’t go away.”
LeVinus said her organization would support legislation to create a statewide rental assistance program to help tenants facing short-term financial hardships avoid missing rent payments.
“We do need a lifeline for the renter who has an unexpected medical bill, or a car accident, or a temporary loss of a job,” LeVinus said.
Arizona has had various rental assistance programs at the state and county level over the last few years – funded mostly by federal pandemic relief grants. No permanent statewide source of funding exists for rental assistance.
But Democrat-backed bills to establish such a statewide rental assistance fund — Ortiz’s Senate Bill 1554 and Rep. Alma Hernandez’s House Bill 2882 — have also not been given hearings in Republican-controlled committees this legislative session.
In the meantime, a lot of renters are still facing eviction. January and February of this year each saw more than 7,000 eviction filings, putting Maricopa County on track to see another extremely high year for eviction cases.
Danielle finds that troubling.
“It’s ridiculous; you’re uprooting someone from their life,” she said.
While not everyone who gets evicted will end up homeless like she did, people are becoming homeless in Maricopa County right now at nearly twice the rate homeless people are finding housing, according to the Maricopa Association of Governments.
A year after her eviction, Danielle has a new job, and she’s preparing to move into a new apartment. But she worries about others she’s met in the shelter where she’s been staying.
“Thankfully, I’m finding my way out now, but some people can’t do that,” Danielle said.
She said something in Arizona needs to change.
Need help? Here are some Arizona eviction resources
🔗 Maricopa County evictions legal process info
🔗 Community Legal Services
🔗 AZ Court Help
🔗 Maricopa County rental assistance
