Eviction Trends in San Diego County, California

Updated September, 2024

In the past decade, attention to residential evictions has grown considerably. Research shows that an eviction takes a tremendous toll on tenants and their families (Desmond 2016; Desmond and Kimbro 2015; Sullivan 2017). An abundance of research links evictions with persistent adolescent and adult health problems (Biederman et al. 2022; Hoke and Boen 2021; Smith et al. 2022; Tsai et al. 2021).

A residential eviction refers to the legal process by which a property owner removes a tenant from a housing property. In addition to this formal legal process, tenants can be displaced through informal processes. An informal eviction can occur when a property owner informally requests a tenant's departure, or when a tenant leaves a property because they cannot pay rent or there are serious  habitability concerns . Researchers estimate that informal evictions outnumber formal evictions, but the absence of a formal process means accurate counts of informal evictions are difficult to obtain ( see attempts to estimate displacement here ). 

This analysis focuses on trends in formal evictions in San Diego County. We use two measures of formal evictions. Unlawful detainer court filings are recorded when a property owner files a request with the superior court to evict a tenant. Sheriff lockouts are recorded when a property owner obtains a judgment against a tenant and requests that the sheriff execute the forcible removal of tenants at a property. Filing and lockout data were obtained by the Homelessness Hub through public records requests made to the San Diego Superior Court and San Diego County Sheriff's Office, respectively.

For information about the role of pandemic-era eviction moratoriums on filings and lockouts, please see  Pandemic Eviction Moratorium Impact on Eviction .

In California, the first step in a formal eviction is for the property owner to provide the tenant with a written notice. If the tenant does not comply with the notice, such as by paying past due rent or leaving, by the given deadline, the property owner may file an unlawful detainer action in the superior court of the county where the tenant is located ( https://selfhelp.courts.ca.gov/eviction-landlord ).

A sheriff lockout is the end result of a court order, when a tenant has not vacated a property. If the tenant and property owner have not reached a settlement agreement, or the judge decides in favor of the property owner, the judge will issue a lockout order. The property owner then takes the order to the sheriff and requests a lockout. When a lockout is executed, law enforcement goes to the address to ensure the physical departure of all named and unnamed tenants in the order.

A filing or lockout does not always mean a tenant was evicted. As shown in Figure 1, a filing has various possible outcomes and does not always result in an eviction. A sheriff lockout service can be canceled, either by the Court or property owner, or be unsuccessful. Nevertheless, the volume of filings and lockouts, and where they occur, offers a measurement that can provide insights into the risk of displacement due to eviction.

The data displayed in the following figures show counts and rates of filings and lockouts. Counts are obtained by aggregating the number of court filings or sheriff lockout requests. Rates are calculated by normalizing counts by the number of renter households, as collected by the American Community Survey (ACS). Data aggregated by region compares counts and rates between the City of San Diego (City) and all other areas of the County of San Diego (County).

Eviction prevention is necessary to avoid the negative consequences of displacement on tenants, including the possibility of a household becoming homeless. Prior to the filing stage, expanded tenant and landlord education, mediation programs, and rental supports have been proven to reduce unnecessary evictions by preventing a court filing, or leading to a mediated outcome that avoids disruptive housing displacement. For more information, see Homelessness Hub's  evaluation of a San Diego tenant education program  and Urban Institute's reports on a  pre-filing eviction prevention clinic  and a  range of housing loss diversion programs .

Biederman, Donna J., Peter Callejo-Black, Christian Douglas, Heather A. O’Donohue, Monica Daeges, Olamiji Sofela, and Ashanti Brown. 2022. “Changes in Health and Health Care Utilization Following Eviction from Public Housing.” Public Health Nursing 39(2):363–71. doi: 10.1111/phn.12964.

Desmond, Matthew. 2016. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City.

Desmond, Matthew, and Rachel Tolbert Kimbro. 2015. “Eviction’s Fallout: Housing, Hardship, and Health.” Social Forces 94(1):295–324. doi: 10.1093/sf/sov044.

Hoke, Morgan K., and Courtney E. Boen. 2021. “The Health Impacts of Eviction: Evidence from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health.” Social Science & Medicine 273:113742. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113742.

Smith, Patrick D., Allison K. Groves, Brent A. Langellier, Danya E. Keene, Alana Rosenberg, and Kim M. Blankenship. 2022. “Eviction, Post-Traumatic Stress, and Emergency Department Use among Low-Income Individuals in New Haven, CT.” Preventive Medicine Reports 29:101956. doi: 10.1016/j.pmedr.2022.101956.

Sullivan, Esther. 2017. “Displaced in Place: Manufactured Housing, Mass Eviction, and the Paradox of State Intervention.” American Sociological Review 82(2):243–69. doi: 10.1177/0003122416688667.

Tsai, Jack, Natalie Jones, Dorota Szymkowiak, and Robert A. Rosenheck. 2021. “Longitudinal Study of the Housing and Mental Health Outcomes of Tenants Appearing in Eviction Court.” Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology 56(9):1679–86. doi: 10.1007/s00127-020-01953-2.