This Is the State With the Most Renters at Risk of Eviction

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Mar 28, 10:12AM EDT · Published Mar 27, 8:19AM EDT

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This Is the State With the Most Renters at Risk of Eviction — © Sean Pavone / iStock via Getty Images

As it became clear how terrible the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic would be on Americans and their day-to-day lives, the Census Bureau created The Household Pulse Survey to measure the extent of the damage to U.S. residents. The questionnaire first went into the field on April 23 and has continued to be one tool for the government’s measure of COVID-19 since then.

The Household Pulse Survey is taken in “phases”, each of which is in the field for about four months. The Census information also takes into account information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Department of Defense (DOD)m Energy Information Administration (EIA), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS/ASPE, Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB), National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), USDA Economic Research Service (ERS), The White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), and The White House Domestic Policy Council (DPC).

The survey asks questions about housing, food security, working from home, employment, health, and spending.

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One of the questions in the survey involves people who rent their residences. To determine the state with the most renters at risk of eviction, 24/7 Wall St. ranked states based on the percentage of renters who responded “very likely” to the question “How likely is it that your household will have to leave this home or apartment within the next two months because of eviction?”.

Based on the latest data from Jan. 26, 2022, to Feb. 7, 2022, 10.1 million renters nationwide are not current on their rental payments, or nearly 16% or the nation’s 64.2 million renters. Of those who are late on their rent, 1.4 million said they are “very likely” to move within two months due to eviction– that is 2.2% of all renters or nearly 14% of renters who are behind on their rent.

States with the largest populations also have the largest number of renters, but they do not necessarily have the greatest share of renters facing evictions. For example, New York ranks third among states in the number of renters (about 4.7 million) but ranks 21st in the share of renters who are “very likely” to be evicted within two months. In contrast, Alabama has far fewer renters than New York (about 761,000), 26th most among states, but it ranks third in the number of renters who are “very likely” facing imminent eviction.

The state where the most people are likely to get evicted is Maine. Here are the details:

> Renters very likely to be evicted in two months: 34.0%
> Renters three or more months behind on rent: 16.3% (9th least)
> Renters receiving state or local gov’t rental assistance: 11.5% (12th most)
> January 2022 unemployment rate: 4.1% (23rd highest)

Methodology: To determine the state with the most renters at risk of eviction, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed data on housing insecurity from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey for the period Jan. 26, 2022, to Feb. 7, 2022. States are ranked based on the percentage of renters who responded “very likely” to the question “How likely is it that your household will have to leave this home or apartment within the next two months because of eviction?” Supplemental data on the percentage of renters who are three or more months behind on rental payments and the percentage of renters who received emergency rental assistance through the state or local government also came from the Household Pulse Survey and is self-reported. Seasonally adjusted data on the January 2022 unemployment rate came from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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Click here to see all the states with the most renters at risk of eviction.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.