“Our Customer Is America”: Housing Insecurity and Eviction in Las Vegas, Nevada’s Postcrisis Rental Markets

Eric Seymour and Joshua Akers

Housing Policy Debate, 2021, vol. 31, issue 3-5, 516-539

Abstract: In the wake of the foreclosure crisis, investors purchased large numbers of single-family residential properties and converted them to rentals. Activists and scholars have documented investor practices of withholding maintenance while raising rents to maximize profits. Increased demand for rental housing since the crisis has constrained the options of low- and moderate-income households, tilting power toward investor-landlords and raising the odds of abuse. A similar although less-discussed dynamic plays out in motels, which are often the last stop before homelessness. Leveraging 10 years of property ownership and eviction records, this article first examines differences among institutional investors and other landlords of single-family rentals in the scale of their holdings and the likelihood of their properties having an eviction record in Las Vegas, Nevada. Second, this article examines the scale of residential motel properties and their association with evictions. Through statistical analysis, we find institutional investors in single-family rentals are associated with higher rates of evictions, although these odds are highest for local actors expanding existing portfolios of rental properties. Large residential motel operators are similarly associated with extremely high eviction rates. We offer a number of recommendations for policy and research.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10511482.2020.1822903 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:houspd:v:31:y:2021:i:3-5:p:516-539

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RHPD20

DOI: 10.1080/10511482.2020.1822903

Access Statistics for this article

Housing Policy Debate is currently edited by Tom Sanchez, Susanne Viscarra and Derek Hyra

More articles in Housing Policy Debate from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().