7K eviction notices filed this year in Las Vegas Valley, report says
Roughly 7,288 eviction notices were filed in the Las Vegas Valley through the end of February, according to a new report.
The Las Vegas metro ranks seventh out of the 36 metros tracked out of 10 states for the most eviction filings, with more filings than New York City and Philadelphia, according to a new report from Eviction Lab, which is run out of Princeton University.
Some 3,377 eviction notices were filed in Clark County and its three municipalities in February, down from 3,911 in January, according to the report.
“Compared to an average, pre-pandemic month of January, this is 20 percent above normal,” said Juan Pablo Garnham, a communication and policy engagement manager with Eviction Lab, regarding valley’s current rate. “The high level of eviction filings in Las Vegas continues its pace. In the last year, the area has seen an eviction filing rate of 13 percent higher than what we normally see across the country as the national averages tend to be around 7 or 8 percent.”
Within Clark County’s jurisdiction, the onus falls on the renter. Landlords have to provide tenants seven days notice and file a $71 filing in the courts, which are some of the lowest and quickest rates of any of the county’s tracked, according to Eviction Lab.
Eviction rates since the pandemic
Eviction Lab has the typical rent in the county at $1,654 and noted on its website that data for the Las Vegas Valley is an undercount compared to figures in the Supreme Court of Nevada’s Annual Report Appendices. Eviction Labs pulls from the county and three other courts: Las Vegas Justice Court, North Las Vegas Justice Court and Henderson Justice Court.
From March 2020 through August 2024, there were 190,133 eviction filings in the valley, a 21 percent increase from pre-pandemic levels. Through August of 2024, there were 51,782 filings, a 42 percent increase from the same period the previous year. In August alone, there were 4,041 filings, a 25 percent increase from a normal month prior to the pandemic.
Grace Hartley, a research specialist at Eviction Lab said the Las Vegas Valley definitely sticks out given its relatively small population to other cities with high eviction rates, noting that the ranking is not done on a per capita basis.
“For decades now, we have seen how rents have skyrocketed while salaries have not been able to catch up. During the pandemic, Las Vegas was one of the American cities where we saw this very clearly,” she said. “According to Zillow, in this metropolitan area, rents have increased by more than a third since January 2020.”
Las Vegas finds itself in a housing crisis that has locked many homeowners into rates they got during the pandemic, and coupled with a lack of multifamily units, has tightened the rental market specifically for low-income renters. Hartley said this is a story playing out across a lot of the cities they are currently tracking in the U.S.
“It’s difficult to assess exactly what factors influence eviction trends, but we have seen across the country that the lack of affordable housing, as well as laws that make it easy to evict tenants and leave them in an unfair situation, can contribute,” she said. Some cities have created right-to-counsel programs, increased eviction fees, promoted mediation between landlords and tenants, or provided rent assistance. These are all options that policymakers should explore and promote.”
Contact Patrick Blennerhassett at pblennerhassett@reviewjournal.com.
