Metro Atlanta recorded the highest eviction-filing rate of any major area tracked by Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, with 142,047 cases filed across five counties from June 2025 to June 2026.
The filings covered Cobb, Clayton, DeKalb, Fulton, and Gwinnett counties and equaled about 24 percent of the region’s 572,679 renter households—roughly one filing for every four renters. Researchers put the average filing rate among places the lab tracks near 7 percent, so Atlanta’s rate is more than three times that benchmark. The five-county total also exceeded recent filing counts for New York City and for entire states such as Virginia and Pennsylvania.
Average rent in the households studied was $1,795 a month. Eviction Lab data show the pressure is not evenly shared. Black residents make up about 53 percent of renters in the five-county area but account for 69 percent of filings—about 74,998 cases in the period.
White renters accounted for roughly 21,396 filings and Hispanic renters about 4,787. Peter Hepburn, an Eviction Lab collaborator and Rutgers sociologist, told local officials that a Black renter faces four to five times the eviction risk of a white renter, and that the gap is not explained by income alone. He said Black households earning more than $80,000 a year still face higher risk than white households earning about $20,000, pointing to discrimination, thinner savings, and weaker informal support networks as remaining factors.
A filing is not the same as a completed eviction. Cases can be dismissed, settled, or paid before a lockout, and landlords sometimes file more than once against the same household. The lab reported a serial-filing rate of about 36 percent and said roughly 14 percent of renter households were threatened with eviction. Even so, a court filing can follow a tenant and make the next lease harder to obtain. The most recent month in the series still produced more than 10,000 filings.
Researchers and local officials have tied the volume to high housing costs, wages that have not kept pace, a shortage of affordable units, and Georgia’s low cost of going to court. Filing an eviction in metro Atlanta typically runs about $50 to $75, compared with a national average a little over $110. Hepburn has argued that the low fee makes landlords quicker to file, and that a short statutory grace period—so a tenant who will be paid a few days after rent is due can pay without a case being opened—could reduce filings.
The city of Atlanta has responded with a two-year, no-fee microloan program that can provide eligible households a $500 interest-free loan toward rent. Mayor Andre Dickens’s chief of staff, Courtney English, has said about 31,000 people in the city itself are facing eviction and called the level unacceptable but solvable.
Advocates continue to press for higher filing fees, more emergency aid, and broader housing supply as the region’s filing rate remains far above the national average.
