Short-Lived Relief: The Racial Geography of Rebounding Eviction Rates in Postmoratorium St. Louis

Abstract

This visualization examines time series and spatial trends in eviction case filings in St. Louis and St. Louis County before, during, and after the federal eviction moratorium. Scraping data from the Missouri Courts system for all eviction cases in the region from January 2017 thru December 2024, the authors compare how eviction rates rebounded across majority-white and majority-Black neighborhoods, particularly in light of the moratorium’s documented effects dramatically diminishing eviction rates in high-risk communities. The results show that, in majority-Black neighborhoods, eviction filing rates rebounded aggressively during the moratorium and to an even stronger degree afterward, even despite emergency rental assistance protections. By contrast, rates rebounded to a more modest degree in majority-white neighborhoods and only after the moratorium’s end. A spatial representation of case filings illustrates the disproportionate degree to which eviction filings endured in majority-Black neighborhoods during the moratorium, setting the stage for pre- and postmoratorium portraits of eviction that were effectively indistinguishable. As a whole, these findings indicate that racialized patterns in the rebound of evictions in the region quickly eroded, and eventually eliminated, the relative parity in eviction filings between white and Black neighborhoods observed in the very early stages of the moratorium.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused substantial job and wage losses in the United States, disproportionately affecting Black and Hispanic renters, who already faced high levels of housing insecurity (Fusaro et al. 2025). In response, the federal government issued multiple moratoria on evictions for nonpayment of rent between March 2020 and August 2021. Although landlords were able to initiate proceedings for other lease violations, early evaluations suggest that the moratoria still dramatically reduced eviction filings (Goetz, Wang, and Damiano 2025), particularly in Black neighborhoods (Hepburn et al. 2023). However, without understanding how eviction filing rates have recovered in the postmoratorium period, the broader implications of the moratoria for disrupting racial and spatial inequality remain unclear.

This data visualization addresses this gap by studying eviction filing rates rebounding in St. Louis City and St. Louis County, a region where racial segregation persists (Gordon 2009) and postpandemic housing precarity risk remains especially high (Chapple, Thomas, and Zuk 2021). Informed by previous research, our analysis parses between two possibilities: (1) Majority-Black neighborhoods may have experienced a delay in the full rebounding of eviction filing rates postmoratorium, due to both their higher levels before the moratorium as well as the targeted efforts of the federal Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP). In the St. Louis region alone, the ERAP provided more than $79 million to at-risk renters to stem the tide of evictions upon the moratorium’s end (City of St. Louis 2022). (2) Relief may have been relatively fleeting, with eviction filing rates in majority-Black neighborhoods rebounding more aggressively compared with majority-white neighborhoods because of the causes and consequences of structural racism in housing (Dickerson 2020). For example, corporate and/or predatory landlords in Black neighborhoods may have continued to file evictions in bulk (Raymond et al. 2021), while racialized rates of COVID-19 infection in segregated Black neighborhoods may have hindered access to and/or effective use of rental assistance programs (Benfer et al. 2021).

To examine these hypotheses, we scrape data from the Missouri Courts system to include all city and county eviction filings for 2017 to 2024, dividing this sample window into three periods—before (January 2017 to February 2020), during (March 2020 to August 2021), and after (September 2021 to December 2024) the moratorium. These records were then geocoded to census block groups (which we use to proxy neighborhoods) in the 2020 decennial census. We then use a time series to compare average eviction rates (per 100 renter households) between majority-white and majority-Black neighborhoods over these periods. To supplement our single site research design, we also map eviction cases across St. Louis City and St. Louis County block groups to illustrate how the distribution and density of eviction filings changed across periods. A further description of our hypotheses, research design, and methods can be found in the supplement.

The results of our analysis are visualized in Figure 1. Beginning with the time series in the top plot, the results confirm a massive decline in eviction filings in majority-Black neighborhoods in the moratorium’s earliest stages. Critically, however, eviction filing rates in these neighborhoods also began to quickly rebound in the midst of the moratorium. This was not the case for majority-White neighborhoods, where eviction cases rebounded modestly only after the moratorium ended. Furthermore, although the ERAP could have reintroduced greater parity between neighborhood types, eviction rates in majority-Black neighborhoods decreased only briefly upon the start of the ERAP (which began January 2021 and continued throughout the study period) before aggressively rebounding through the postmoratorium period.

Figure 1.

Trends in St. Louis City and St. Louis County eviction case filings, January 2017 to December 2024 (n = 99,530 cases). (A) Mean BG eviction filing rates in St. Louis City and St. Louis County by BG type, 2017 to 2024. (B) Spatial distribution and density of eviction filings in St. Louis City and St. Louis County by BG type and moratorium period.

The bottom plot tells this story from a spatial perspective. The middle panel shows that during the moratorium, eviction activity (1 point = 50–99 eviction cases per block group) endured in Black neighborhoods but effectively ceased in white neighborhoods, a difference that would have been mitigated if filings in Black neighborhoods had held (or the ERAP had helped sustain) their initial decline. Indeed, the maps for the periods before (left panel) and after (right panel) the moratorium appear identical, suggesting that eviction rates in Black (and white) neighborhoods had swiftly and fully recovered even after unprecedented policy interventions.

Taken as a whole, the results suggest a story of short-lived relief for Black neighborhoods in St. Louis. Although the moratorium initially brought parity, Black neighborhoods experienced an earlier onset and an accelerated rate of eviction filings during and after the moratorium, both of which helped prevent a longer period of “recovery.” In the end, these racialized differences contributed directly toward reproducing long-standing racial divisions in eviction soon after the moratorium’s end, which are readily observed in striking visual patterns tightly coupled with racial segregation. In this regard, St. Louis may offer a lesson, or a preview, for many other places where segregation similarly persists and racial inequality endures. We invite future research to build upon these findings to examine whether and why similar trends do (or do not) hold across the United States.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-srd-10.1177_23780231251404293 – Supplemental material for Short-Lived Relief: The Racial Geography of Rebounding Eviction Rates in Postmoratorium St. Louis

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-srd-10.1177_23780231251404293 for Short-Lived Relief: The Racial Geography of Rebounding Eviction Rates in Postmoratorium St. Louis by Anne Brown, Samuel H. Kye and Yi Wang in Socius