Des Moines Eviction Risk: Moderate
Tract 19153000101 · Polk County, IA · pop 3,793
Des Moines in Polk County is where census tract 19153000101 sits, home to 3,793 residents. Its landlord eviction-risk score is 5.7/10. It lands near the 65th percentile nationally for landlord eviction risk.
Rent eats 30% or more of income for 61% of renter households, a severe level, and 37% are severely burdened at 50% or more. Average rent runs $963 a month against an average household income of $41,845 a year, roughly 28% of income at the averages. About 68% of occupied units are renter-occupied, a renter-majority tract.
Percentile rank
Higher percentile = riskier than more peers.Risk heat across Des Moines and the region
Centroid at 41.6327, -93.5464 · click any tract to drill in
Why Des Moines scores 5.7
9 axes · 1 = landlord-friendlyHow Des Moines compares
Risk score vs. parent city, county, state.SVI percentile: 96
CDC/ATSDR 2022. Higher = more vulnerable. National percentile across 84k tracts.
- 86%Socioeconomic
- 99%Household composition
- 66%Racial/ethnic minority
- 88%Housing & transportation
HOLC grade: C: Definitely Declining
This tract sits within an area graded by the Home Owners' Loan Corporation in the 1930s. Grade C meant mixed-race / working-class neighborhoods rated as risky. These designations suppressed minority homeownership for generations and remain a documented predictor of present-day eviction filings and rent burden.
- 0%Grade A
- 0%Grade B
- 100%Grade C
- 0%Grade D · redlined
Source: Mapping Inequality (americanpanorama.org), 1935-1940 HOLC residential security maps, aggregated to 2020 census tracts by area share. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
Court-record eviction history
Court-validated eviction filings collected from county clerks and consolidated by the Eviction Lab at Princeton University. Filing rate is filings per 100 renter households.1
Historic baseline (2000–2018)
- 1,215Total filings over 10 yrs
- 11.34%Avg annual filing rate
- 14.4%Peak (2015)
- 161Filings in 2015 (latest validated)
Census tracts with similar eviction risk
Closest by Eviction Risk Score.
Eviction-adjacent indicators
Crude prevalence of conditions linked to housing loss. Source: CDC PLACES (cwsq-ngmh), 2023 model-based small-area estimates.
- 23.4%Housing insecurity
- 18.3%Utility-shutoff threat
- 35.4%Food insecurity
- 38.7%SNAP enrollment
- 17.4%Transit barriers
- 15.4%No health insurance
- 23.3%Frequent mental distress
- 44.4%Any disability
What drives eviction risk in Des Moines
The score leans hardest on economic stress at 8.9/10. That part is specific to this tract, computed from its own rent, income, and poverty figures. Statewide and court-level factors such as eviction-process speed and rent-control exposure are inherited from Des Moines eviction risk, while the economic and supply signals are measured at the tract level.
Set against its neighbors, this tract scores above the Polk County average of 5.0 and above the Iowa statewide average of 4.3. Within its own county it reads on the riskier side for landlords.
HOLC surveyors mapped this tract in the 1930s with a dominant grade of C ("Declining"), above the redlined D tier. The grading still shaped decades of lending and development in the surrounding area.
In CDC survey modeling, about 23.4% of adults here said they could not pay rent or mortgage at some point in the past year, and 18.3% faced a utility shutoff threat, a common early warning before a filing.
For a landlord, conditions here are middle-of-the-road. Standard screening and prompt, documented notices usually keep cases short.
About tract 19153000101
What is the eviction-risk score for census tract 19153000101?
What is the average rent in tract 19153000101?
What is the poverty rate in tract 19153000101?
How socially vulnerable is tract 19153000101?
How many evictions are filed each year in tract 19153000101?
What share of households in tract 19153000101 struggle to pay rent?
How does tract 19153000101 compare to Des Moines overall?
Was tract 19153000101 historically redlined?
Highest-risk tracts in Des Moines
Top eight tracts in Des Moines ranked by composite eviction-risk score.