Bellingham Eviction Risk: Elevated

33% are severely burdened past the 50% mark. That cohort absorbs no shock: one repair bill or one cut shift converts straight into arrears. The dominant input is tenant-organizing strength at 9.4/10.

On the softer side, court filing pressure reads 1.1/10. Running hot, rent-regulation exposure reads 8.7/10. At $1,983 a month, rents run 26% over what the rest of Bellingham commands.

The voucher gap is 20.8%: households holding assistance that local rents will not absorb, which surfaces as churn rather than arrears. The filing record is not thin: 11 evictions over 3 years of observation.

Filings peaked in 2018 at 1.4% of renter households. In a typical year about 0.8% of renter households face a filing. On the national scale it lands near the 80th percentile of the 84,120 tracts scored.

Only 23% of units are renter-occupied. Rental comparables are thin; price a renewal off the nearest genuine rental sub-market rather than off surrounding sale prices. Social vulnerability reads 6/10 on the CDC index, a measure of exposure to housing and economic shocks. Of its three components the household composition measure is the most pressured.

These are ACS 5-year estimates; the score moves when the ACS, court-record, or statute inputs behind it move.