This Is the State Where People Are Most Likely to Lose Homes

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jun 7, 8:20AM EDT

This Is the State Where People Are Most Likely to Lose Homes — © mujun / iStock via Getty Images

The COVID-19 pandemic had a number of effects across America that went beyond sickness and deaths. Some people had trouble with their jobs and incomes. Others had to work from home. Still, others went hungry. The U.S. Census Bureau began to track many of these changes early in the pandemic and continues tracking them today. One trend it follows is the likelihood people will be evicted or have their homes foreclosed upon.

The study that covers the trends is called the Household Pulse Survey. The bureau has released weekly results from this in three phases. The first began on April 23, 2020, and ended July 21, 2020. The second and third phases followed, with the current phase, 3.1, covering May 12 to May 24. This is “Week 30” of the process.

The survey was created by an effort across several government agencies. These include the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Defense, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, the National Center for Education Statistics, the National Center for Health Statistics, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the Social Security Administration, and the USDA Economic Research Service.

The section that covers whether people may lose their homes is titled “Likelihood of Eviction or Foreclosure.” It is based on answers to questions about the “percentage of adults living in households not current on rent or mortgage where eviction or foreclosure in the next two months is either very likely or somewhat likely.” Some of the eviction activity could be influenced by moratoriums in some parts of the country.
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The state with the highest figure for the Week 30 period was Wyoming at 68.8%. This is against the national average of 32.3%. Wyoming was followed closely by Tennessee at 61.6%. The state with the lowest number was Vermont at 4.7%.

The survey also looked at America’s largest metropolitan areas. Riverside, California, topped the metro list at 51.6%. The metro with the lowest figure was Boston at 16.1%.

As each week’s data is released, the numbers change. Perhaps as more people get back to work, the figures for evictions and foreclosures will improve.

Click here to see the American city where houses are selling the slowest.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.