February 18, 2026
Author: Nicole Newhouse (Executive Director, AZHC)
When we think of eviction, we picture a crisis: a court date, a sheriff, a family’s belongings on the curb. But that’s the end of the story.
The beginning often looks like a utility shut-off warning, a steep medical bill, a sudden job loss, or a missed car payment. For many Arizona families, housing instability builds over time — even when the final trigger is sudden.
Real eviction prevention means spotting these financial warning signs early and acting before a temporary shock becomes a housing crisis. It means connecting the dots between our housing, energy, legal, and health systems to solve a small problem before it becomes a big, expensive one.
This is a practical, systems-level solution. It creates a more stable foundation that benefits everyone — families, landlords, and the entire Arizona economy.
The High Cost of Eviction Filing
An eviction filing sends ripples through the entire community, creating high costs for everyone.
- For Families: Eviction is a leading pathway into homelessness and housing instability. It disrupts lives, jobs, and a child’s education.
- For Landlords: Evictions are a costly business problem. A 2024 analysis from Innago shows the cost of a single eviction can hit $3,500 to $10,000 in lost rent, legal fees, turnover, and repairs.
- For Employers: A stable workforce needs stable housing. When employees are forced to move, businesses see more absenteeism and turnover.
- For Taxpayers & Public Systems: When someone is displaced, the public cost for emergency shelter, healthcare, and other crisis services can top $8,000 to $10,000.
In Maricopa County, these costs are adding up fast. In 2024, the county saw a record 87,197 eviction filings, surpassing the previous pre-pandemic peak.
The Arizona Squeeze: Rent, Wages, and Summer Heat
Arizona renters are stretched thin. The margin for error is shrinking, and many households have little financial cushion when unexpected expenses hit.
- The Rent-to-Income Gap: Costs are rising much faster than paychecks. A 2025 ASU report found that since 2019, Arizona renters’ household costs (rent and utilities) shot up by 23%, while their incomes grew by only 4%.
- Widespread Cost Burden: Because of this gap, more than half (52.4%) of all renters in Arizona are “cost-burdened,” paying over 30% of their income for housing. More than a quarter are “severely cost-burdened,” paying over 50%.
- Seasonal Stress: The problem gets worse every summer. Eviction filings in Arizona consistently peak between August and October, right when scorching temperatures send utility bills soaring.
The “Upstream” Solution: Acting Before the Crisis
The biggest problem with how we handle evictions is timing and coordination. We almost always act too late.
Most help is “downstream” meaning it shows up at the courthouse after an eviction is filed. By then, a tenant’s rental history is damaged, and the relationship with the landlord is often broken. It’s an expensive, high stress, last-ditch effort.
The goal is to move “upstream” and catch families when they first show signs of financial distress.
- Downstream (Reactive): A tenant gets a court summons. A legal aid lawyer has to race to find emergency funds, and the landlord has already spent money on legal filings.
- Upstream (Proactive): A household falls behind on a utility bill. Instead of just a shut-off notice, this “early warning” triggers a proactive text from a community partner. A navigator can then connect the household to short-term aid for both utilities and rent, solving the problem weeks before a landlord ever has to file.
The Smart Economics of Prevention
Arizona court data suggests many evictions are driven by relatively small, short-term rent debts that could be resolved with timely intervention. They are filed over relatively small, solvable debts.
The median claim amount in Maricopa County eviction filings is approximately $2,400. This creates a clear cost-benefit argument for everyone involved:
- Cost of Prevention: ~$2,400 (to cover the median rent debt)
- Cost of Eviction (to Landlord): $3,500-$10,000 (in turnover)
- Cost of Eviction (to Public): $8,000-$10,000 (in social services)
In purely financial terms, prevention is often the most cost-effective option for everyone involved. This approach is fiscally sound strategy. It saves landlords money on turnover, protects public budgets from crisis spending, and keeps the housing market stable.
How to Build a Smarter System
The good news is that we don’t need to build an entirely new infrastructure. We need to better connect and empower the systems that we already fund so they can work faster and smarter.
The keys are speed, information, and coordination.
Speedy, Flexible Funding: We need stabilization funds that can move at the pace of crisis. Assistance must arrive in days, not weeks, or families fall through the cracks. That means streamlining approvals, expanding who can administer funds, and allowing for quick, low-barrier access when early warning signs appear.
Clear Information for Everyone: Every tenant and landlord should know where to turn for help before things escalate. We can build a single, easy-to-use hub where both parties can find mediation, rental aid, and utility assistance. And we can even go further by equipping the people outside of the housing system (utilities, lenders, property managers) with simple tools and ready-to-send messages that connect struggling households to help. A text on a past-due bill or a QR code on a statement can turn confusion into connection.
Connecting the Data: This is the most powerful “upstream” tool. By aligning utility data, court data, and assistance portals (with strong privacy safeguards), we can identify trends and households at risk and intervene before the crisis. Over time, those same partners who send resource links today can feed anonymized data tomorrow, creating a true early warning network where a missed payment becomes not a punishment, but a prompt for prevention.
Making Prevention Our Normal Practice
Arizona has already seen a proof of concept. During the pandemic, emergency rental assistance helped tens of thousands of Arizona households remain housed and prevented a surge in evictions during an unprecedented economic shock.
The programs were not perfect. They were built quickly, systems were fragmented, and local partners were stretched thin. But they demonstrated something important: when flexible funding moves quickly, eviction filings drop and housing stability improves.
Critics rightly note that these programs relied heavily on one-time federal Emergency Rental Assistance funding. That temporary funding is now gone.
The challenge for Arizona in 2026 is clear: How do we create a permanent, right-sized version of this stabilization tool using sustainable state and local funding?
Now Arizona has an opportunity to build something durable. By putting prevention at the center of our housing system, Arizona can respond before families reach a breaking point, help landlords avoid costly turnover, and reduce expensive crisis spending across public systems.
Eviction prevention alone will not solve the housing shortage. But without it, we will continue paying far more to manage crises that to prevent them.