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EVICTIONS IN MARICOPA
“Rental prices are down from 2022,” said Dayv Morgan, a prominent Maricopa real estate agent. “The first Maricopa apartments were completed in 2021 and there’s been a lot more since then, so I think that is also a factor.” Valley rents fell between 3% and 5% annually since that year. Yet, Valley landlords evicted renters a record 87,197 times in 2024. The previous record had been set in 2005 when landlords filed to evict 83,687 renters. Experts say building more apartments is doing little to solve the housing shortage that has beleaguered the Phoenix area. Especially in Maricopa, where the few available apartments are billed as “luxury” and cost hundreds of dollars more per month than Phoenix apartments on average, according to Apartment List. Indeed, evictions have ballooned since the advent of apartment living in Maricopa, according to William Lee “Bill” Griffin, the constable for Western Pinal County who lives in Cobblestone Farms. He has observed evictions going up month-over-month since he was appointed to the office in October. Bearing the burden Roughly half of the Maricopa evictions in January were served at apartment complexes, those tenants were most often middle-income earners. The rest of the eviction filings were associated with single-family homes like Sandoval’s. “One trend that we know is happening is the rise in housing cost burden. We consider a household ‘cost burdened’ if rent exceeds 30% of your income,” said Lorae T. Stojanovic, the Eviction Lab researcher at Princeton University who is tracking data in Pinal County. “The levels of people who are cost burdened have
HOMES
APARTMENTS
TOTAL
May 2023
7
0 0
7
June July
10
10
6 5 7 4 5 4 9
1
7 9 8 4 5 4
August
4
September
1
October
0 0 0 4 3 0 0 0 0
November December
January 2024
13 17 10
February
14 10
March
April May June
4 8 7
4 8 7
July-October 2024
No data
November December
6 9
9
15 22 23
13 12
January 2025
11
was alarming, but not necessarily surprising given some baseline facts we know about residual income among renters,” Stojanovic told InMaricopa . “Even the middle class feels a crunch. It would be interesting to see whether places like Maricopa have seen larger losses in residual income or larger increases in the cost- burdened share than the national average.” The Sandovals were cost burdened. They took home $3,800 every month, meaning their rent payment represented 47% of their income.
risen to their highest levels since the Great Recession.” From 2001 to 2023, the share of middle- class renters who were cost burdened more than doubled among those making at least $45,000 annually, according to Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University tabulations of U.S. Census Bureau data in December. “I thought your observation about rising evictions in the middle class in Maricopa
SHARE OF U.S. RENTER HOUSEHOLDS (PERCENT)
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Source: Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University
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InMaricopa.com | April 2025
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