Maricopa County on pace for 88,000 eviction filings, an all-time high

Maricopa County is all but sure to set a new record for evictions in 2024. With two months remaining in the year, the county is on pace to surpass 88,000 eviction filings, according to data from the Justice Courts of Maricopa County.

The record, set in 2005, is 83,687 eviction filings. To get less than that number, eviction filings would have to average 5,173 over November and December. The last time either month fell under that threshold was May 2022.

Evictions certainly haven’t been trending downward as the year has progressed. There were 7,688 eviction filings In October, a 2% increase from September. That’s the eighth-most eviction filings Maricopa County has ever seen in a single month, tied with August 2023.

Maricopa County currently averages 7,334 filings a month, nearly 400 more than the 2005 monthly average of 6,974 filings. That’s an increase of 5%. There have been 73,339 evictions filed this year.


The number of evictions in the county has been high for a while. Last year, Maricopa County fell just short of breaking the 2005 record with 83,326 evictions. And though this year could be the worst for evictions ever, there were more evictions last October — 7,947 — than this one.

The most eviction filings in a single month occurred in January of this year, with 8,025.

The pandemic made the problem worse. Post-COVID-19, Phoenix emerged as one of America’s eviction capitals. Maricopa County had 16 eviction filings per 100 households during the past year, according to Eviction Lab, one of the highest eviction rates in the nation.

From 2019 to 2023, rents for apartments in Phoenix rose 35%. Currently, the typical rent in the Valley is $1,389 per month. Higher rents also contributed to the city's highest increase in inflation two years ago, according to the Wall Street Journal.

This data is another sign of Phoenix’s worsening housing affordability situation. The city continues to deal with a lack of available housing, high rental prices and unaffordable options relative to residents’ income. As a whole, Arizona is short 270,000 housing units.

However, the city and state are enacting some fixes. Gov. Katie Hobbs signed a law earlier this year that legalized the creation of casitas, or accessory dwelling units, behind homes in municipalities across the state. Most recently, on Nov. 6, Phoenix broke ground on an affordable housing project that will bring more than 350 affordable housing units to midtown.

Whether those solutions make a difference remains to be seen. For now, eviction filings don’t seem to be slowing down.