Austin rents are down — yet evictions spiked by 30%

Median rent in Austin, Texas fell by 7% in 2024 as a result of the city's building boom, vindicating YIMBY activists who pushed the city to build more housing. But as Jared Brey explains in Governing, eviction filings rose by 30% last year — the biggest spike of any of the 38 cities tracked by Princeton University's Eviction Lab — signaling a lingering housing crisis. 

According to Brey, "There’s no clean explanation for why eviction filings spiked last year in a city where rents have dropped below the national median." Eviction rates were clustered in some apartment buildings, some with eviction rates as high as 38%. "Tax-exempt properties, which provide reduced-rate housing for people who make less than the area median income, often supported by Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, also had higher eviction rates than the area average."

Eviction rates don't necessarily correlate with high costs of living, either. Evictions remain relatively low in New York, a city with one of the highest housing costs in the nation. "Places with lower eviction rates tend to have more tenant-friendly regulations in place, says Grace Hartley, a researcher at the Eviction Lab. An eviction diversion program in Philadelphia, which requires landlords to negotiate with tenants before moving ahead with an eviction, has been hailed as a model for the country. But there’s no single policy that’s associated with low eviction rates."