Read the map: where in America is it hardest to evict?
Every Census tract in the United States, 84,120 of them, colored by a single 1-10 Eviction Risk Score that blends statute text, court disposition, political climate, and economic stress. The patterns below aren't opinion; they're what falls out when you compute the same score everywhere using public data. Coverage spans all 31,828 US cities, 1,849 counties, 17,904 named neighborhoods, and an average score of 3.9/10 nationwide.
Most of America is moderate, but the tails matter
If you sliced the country by score, 24% of tracts land in the "moderate" 4.5 to 6.0 band, the long fat middle of the bell. The thing landlords actually need to underwrite is the right shoulder: the 25% of tracts at 6.0+ where eviction timelines and counsel costs balloon, often concentrated in coastal metros.
The coasts run hot. The interior runs cold.
This is the single chart that explains most of what you see on the map. The Northeast and West coast cluster near 6, while the Midwest and South-Central interior cluster near 5. The difference is mostly the statute axis: California, Oregon, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts all carry strong tenant protections that don't exist in Texas, Oklahoma, or Indiana.
Three layers, three zoom ranges
The chloropleth isn't one layer; it's three, each tuned for the resolution you can actually perceive at that zoom. Watch the legend as you zoom in: the country view paints in big county blocks, then resolves to individual tracts at city zoom, then adds city polygon outlines and street labels at neighborhood zoom.
County choropleth
3,948 US counties shaded by their population-weighted average score. This is the only layer visible until you cross zoom 6, so it has to carry the country-level pattern reading.
Census tracts fade in
At zoom 6 the tract layer cross-fades in over the counties. By zoom 7 the counties are gone and you're looking at 84,120 individual tracts, each about 4,000 people, each with its own score.
City labels + clickable tracts
City names and (in major metros) borough/neighborhood labels appear. Every tract is hover-previewable and click-throughable to its full canonical page at /t/{geoid}/.
What you'll notice when you start scrolling
Sharp lines at state borders
Cross the Texas-Louisiana line and the score jumps a full point. State statute is the single biggest input, so neighbors with different laws end up at noticeably different colors even when the metro spans both sides.
Urban hotspots inside cooler states
Even in Texas (cold avg 4.7), Austin and Houston tracts run 6+. Urban tract-level inputs like rent burden, renter share, and density push individual neighborhoods into elevated territory regardless of the state's overall posture.
Coastal-to-interior gradient
Both coasts paint dark; the interior runs lighter. Statute is only part of it. Coastal cities also carry higher rent burden, denser renter populations, and more organized tenant counsel, and all of that feeds the Eviction Risk Score.
Big intra-city spreads
Inside Los Angeles, tract scores range from 6.4 (the west side) to 8.6 (south-central). Same statute, same court; what changes is the tract-level rent burden and renter share. Zoom in to see the spread.
The poles of the distribution
The score is a continuous gradient, and most states sit in a 4 to 6 band, but the tails are stark. The 10 hardest states to operate as a landlord all share three features: long mandatory notice periods, strict just-cause requirements, and active tenant-counsel programs. The 10 easiest share the opposite: 3-day notices, no rent caps, fast-track court dockets.
🟥 Highest risk for landlords
🟩 Most landlord-friendly
What's actually in the score
The Eviction Risk Score is a weighted average, not a max or a sum. Each tract gets a value on each of nine axes, all normalized to 0 to 10, and they're combined with weights tuned on a held-out validation set of real eviction outcomes. Full weight schedule and data-source URLs at the methodology page.
Local political climate
2020 + 2024 county presidential margins. Strongest signal of next-cycle tenant legislation.
State political climate
Trifecta status + governor party + legislative session calendar.
Regional climate
Census-division roll-up to capture spillover from neighboring states.
Eviction process difficulty
Notice period, filing fees, hearing schedule, and default-judgment availability, all coded from statute text.
Rent control risk
Current rent caps + active legislative pipeline for new caps.
Tenant organizing
Local tenant union density, ACS renter share, legal-aid provider count.
Housing court bias
Disposition rates, days-to-judgment, repeat-tenant filing share from each state's court admin office.
Supply constraint
Median rent vs metro median, vacancy rate, permitting pace.
Economic stress
Rent burden (% spending 30%+ on rent), poverty rate, BLS LAUS unemployment.
FAQ
What's an "eviction risk" score actually measuring?
The expected difficulty of recovering possession on a non-paying tenant: calendar days from notice to writ, statutory friction, expected legal cost, and expected counter-action exposure. The intended user is a landlord, syndicator, or property manager underwriting a market. Tenants frequently consult it too, but the lens is "how hard is it for the landlord side" by design.
Why doesn't the score predict whether a specific eviction will succeed?
Because that depends on facts of the case the score can't see. The score is the structural difficulty of evictions in that geography. A landlord operating in a 9-score market will face higher base difficulty on every case; what they do with that on a specific tenant is up to them.
Why does the score vary so much within one city?
Of the 9 input axes, 5 vary at the tract level: rent burden, renter share, poverty rate, unemployment, and density. The other 4 (statute, state climate, court bias, regional climate) are uniform within a state or county. So a city's "average" is a population-weighted roll-up, but individual neighborhoods often differ 1 to 3 points based on tract-level inputs alone. The interactive map shows this directly when you zoom past zoom 10.
How is this different from Eviction Lab's tract-level data?
Eviction Lab publishes historical filing volume: how many evictions actually happened, recorded after the fact. Our score is forward-looking; it estimates how hard the next eviction will be based on laws and conditions in place today. We use Eviction Lab as one of the nine inputs (the court-bias axis) but the Eviction Risk Score is a different question.
Why do small towns show "no neighborhood breakdown"?
Of our 31,828 covered cities, only ~3,948 (12%) have officially-named neighborhoods in the Census/Esri data we ingest. The other ~28,000 are small incorporated places without internal subdivisions. The map still scores them at the tract level; they just appear as one or two tracts shaded with the city's overall risk.
How fresh is the data?
Score recomputed quarterly. ACS Census inputs roll annually (current vintage: ACS 2023 5-year, the latest available). Statute encoding tracks legislative sessions and updates within ~30 days of bills becoming law. Court-disposition data lags 6-9 months because state administrative offices publish on annual cycles.
Is this legal advice?
No. Informational only. Every state-level link on this page lands on a state guide that summarizes statute, but it isn't legal counsel. Consult a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction before taking any eviction, notice, or rent-increase action.
Can I embed this map on my own site?
Yes. An iframe-friendly embed version is at /embed/ with attribution-required CC-BY-4.0 licensing. Reach out via the footer contact for commercial-licensing terms or for the underlying GeoJSON dataset.