The U.S. Eviction Rankings

16.5% of renters in North Charleston, South Carolina are evicted every year. That's 10 households every day who are permanently forced out of their homes. In fact North Charleston has the very dubious honor of topping the Eviction Lab's Eviction Rankings. The Eviction Rankings lists the cities which had the worst records for evicting tenants in 2016.

The Eviction Lab at Princeton University has created a nationwide database of evictions records. The data is free to download or you can explore it on the Eviction Lab's own Eviction Ratings or Eviction Maps.

The map section of the Eviction Lab allows you to compare the eviction rates in each state or county for 2016. It also allows you to view the eviction rates for previous years. If you select two or more states on the map (or counties) then you can compare the eviction rates between those states in more detail. This more detailed view includes information on the eviction filing rates and totals. It also includes economic and demographic details for the selected states.

If you are interested in downloading the data and creating your own mapped visualizations then you might want to have a look at the New York Times' In 83 Million Eviction Records, a Sweeping and Intimate New Look at Housing in America. In this article the Times has used the data to explore the social and economic cost of the USA's high eviction rates. The article includes a choropleth map showing each state's 2016 eviction judgment rates for renting households.

The Times' article also includes an animated map visualizing a year of eviction judgments in Richmond. In 2016 about 1 in 9 Richmond renter households were issued eviction judgments. Addresses are added to the map by date. The yellow areas on the map are the majority white neighborhoods in Richmond. They are also the areas with the fewest eviction judgments.