Downtown Gary Eviction Risk: Elevated

The score leans hardest on economic stress at 10/10. SNAP participation runs 46.7% against 15.2% nationally. The poverty rate is 51%, which in this model reads as reduced rent-recovery odds after a judgment.

Inability to pay a utility bill runs 32.8% against 9.2% nationally. Utility arrears usually lead rent arrears by a month or two. 29% are severely burdened past the 50% mark. That cohort absorbs no shock: one repair bill or one cut shift converts straight into arrears.

Running hot, tenant-organizing strength reads 9.3/10. Annualized rent equals 37% of average household income of $28,125, past the 30% affordability line, which thins the margin any screening standard has to work with.

On the high side, housing-court posture reads 8.7/10. This is renter territory: 66% of occupied units are tenant-occupied. It sits 1.6 points above the Lake County average of 4.4.

Average gross rent is $871, 14% below the Gary average. In the 1930s the federal Home Owners' Loan Corporation graded this ground C ("Definitely Declining"). Redlining cut off mortgage credit to whole blocks for decades, and the areas graded D still carry measurably lower ownership and higher rent burden today. On the national scale it lands near the 78th percentile of the 84,120 tracts scored.

Tract-level figures come from the ACS 5-year release and are rebuilt whenever that, the court-record feed, or the statutory ledger behind the score changes.