New Orleans Eviction Geography: Results of an Increasingly Precarious Housing Market
Jane Place Neighborhood Sustainability Initiative 2019
Loyola University New Orleans College of Law Research Paper No. 2019-14
27 Pages Posted: 20 Sep 2019
Date Written: June 19, 2019
Abstract
New Orleans is facing a growing displacement crisis. As the cost of living has increased, low-income families increasingly struggle to find stable, habitable, and affordable housing. Since 2000, when controlling for inflation, rents have risen 49% while incomes have seen an 8% decrease in the same period. Incomes are not increasing at the same rate as housing costs, and rents continue to rise. Many neighborhoods are rapidly changing, racially and economically, and have become prohibitively expensive for the majority of the city’s residents.
While some residents might find themselves gradually priced out of a neighborhood, others face a more sudden kind of displacement: eviction. Displacement by eviction causes housing volatility, neighborhood instability, homelessness, financial stress, poverty, emotional distress and loss of hope. The eviction crisis in New Orleans is supported by an arcane legal regime that governs landlord-tenant matters in Louisiana, and favors landlords over tenants. This structural arrangement perpetuates economic, social, racial, gender, and political inequality across the state.
The subject of evictions has been an under-analyzed aspect of New Orleans’ deepening housing crisis. Crucially, data surrounding evictions in New Orleans, and their impact on individuals and neighborhoods, has never been analyzed locally in a comprehensive way. Until now, there were no public datasets of evictions filed and ordered in Orleans Parish available . Records of eviction cases were buried in individual court files, located at First City Court on the East Bank and Second City Court on the West Bank. There was no meaningful way to understand the scale of the eviction crisis, analyze changes over time, understand where evictions are geographically concentrated, or why they occur.
Keywords: housing, evictions, statistics
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