Thurston County, Nebraska Eviction Risk: Moderate

Thurston County, Nebraska eviction laws registers an eviction risk score of 3.2/10 (Moderate), placing it 1st out of 93 counties statewide - squarely in the higher-risk of Nebraska by risk level. Only 0 counties carry a higher score, while 92 are rated lower, which means landlords operating here face conditions that are notably more tenant-strained than the bulk of the state despite the Low overall designation. The county's 7 tracked communities spread across a narrow but telling range, from 3.2 to 6.6, reflecting pockets of real economic stress within a small rural population of roughly 4,826 residents.

The highest-risk community in the county is Macy (6.6/10), the seat of the Omaha eviction risk Tribal Nation, where poverty rates and renter housing instability converge most sharply. Winnebago follows at 4.4/10 - also a tribal community with a high renter share and limited housing supply - and Walthill rounds out the upper tier at 3.8/10. On the lower end, the county seat of Pender, the county's largest city at approximately 1,379 residents, scores 3.4/10, and Bancroft comes in at 3.4/10. The city of Thurston itself, with a population of roughly 100, records the lowest score in the county at 3.2/10. That spread from 3.2 to 6.6 is relatively compressed, but the concentration of higher scores among the tribal communities is the single most important local variable to understand when evaluating rental exposure here.

Economically, Thurston County is one of Nebraska's more stressed rural markets. Average rent runs approximately $769 per month, and the average rent burden sits at 19.9% of household income - modest in absolute terms but set against a poverty rate of 18.7% and an unusually high renter share of 42.8% of occupied housing units. That renter share is substantially above rural Nebraska norms and means eviction outcomes, when they occur, hit a proportionally large share of the population. The county scores 4.1/10 against a Nebraska statewide average of 3.6/10, and while that gap may appear small, the rank of 1st of 93 captures how concentrated risk really is relative to the rest of the state's mostly low-scoring rural counties.

Thurston County's elevated rank relative to its absolute score reflects the tribal-community concentration of rental stress in Macy and Winnebago. Both communities sit on federal trust land under the Omaha eviction risk Tribe of Nebraska eviction laws, where housing conditions, poverty rates, and limited private-market alternatives push eviction risk higher than the county's overall Low label suggests for landlords operating specifically in those communities.