Court documents suggest who is being evicted and why

As rents increase in Boston, more tenants are facing eviction – especially those with lower incomes. The median household income in East Boston for 2016 was $54,409, which was 14% less than the city as a whole. Who is facing eviction in East Boston? Data from the City of Boston only includes evictions that end up in Housing Court with no background information on tenants. Nevertheless, we can use the location of the evictions to get a sense of who is being affected. Housing Court data from 2014 shows that East Boston had 161 evictions and 70% of them went into court because of failure to pay the rent. Data also revealed that evictions happened in lower income areas and communities with a higher percentage of Latino population.

By Shing-Yun Chiang

161 Evictions in East Boston

One grey circle indicates one eviction. East Boston shared 161 cases of about 5,000 evictions in Boston and neighborhoods from 2014's Housing Court data. Although it is not a big number, what we don't really know is how many people got evicted outside the court. This is a missing piece of the puzzle.

Overdue rent is the main reason

People in East Boston have a lower income, so housing rent here is also relatively lower. However, 70% of the eviction ended up in Housing Court because of failure to pay rent.

Rent is an issue in areas with lower rent

Overdue rent appeared to be the main reason causing evictions. It is surprising that this issue happened in lower-rent areas instead of higher-rent ones. Some people are still not able to pay the rent on time even though the rent is relatively lower.

Lower income areas had more cases in court

From the distribution of evictions, the map shows that most of the evictions are located in the income bracket from $24,000 to $72,000 and income bracket below $24,000. The darker the point, the more evictions in that location. Grey areas indicate that there is no income data for these Census Tracts.

Latino communities sufferred more

East Boston is well-known for its diverity in race. Latino people are more than half of the population in East Boston and areas with higher percentage of Latino people have more evictions.

2014 Housing court data from Project HOPE, income and demographic data from Census Reporter