West Bethlehem Eviction Risk: Elevated

On the high side, tenant-organizing strength reads 9.1/10. Against the Lehigh County average of 4.7, this tract reads riskier for landlords by 2.2 points. 12% are severely burdened past the 50% mark. That cohort absorbs no shock: one repair bill or one cut shift converts straight into arrears.

Princeton's Eviction Lab logged 404 filings here across 7 tracked years. Running hot, rent-regulation exposure reads 7.1/10. Against Lehigh County at 45.1%, about half of renters here are cost-burdened.

At $1,230 a month, rents run 11% under what the rest of Bethlehem commands. The worst year on record was 2006, when 9.3% of renter households were served. In the 1930s the federal Home Owners' Loan Corporation graded this ground B ("Still Desirable"). 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.

In a typical year about 6.5% of renter households face a filing. On the national scale it lands near the 84th percentile of the 84,120 tracts scored. Social vulnerability reads 7.8/10 on the CDC index, a measure of exposure to housing and economic shocks.

All figures here are ACS 5-year estimates for this tract, refreshed as the underlying releases land.