Eviction filings in several of Virginia’s most populous jurisdictions ticked up through the first half of the year, new data show, putting them on track to meet or surpass pre-pandemic levels.

Roughly 2,500 eviction suits were filed in Arlington County between July 2022 and June 2023, about a 10% increase above pre-pandemic levels. Fairfax County, the state’s most populous, saw 7,500 filings – with filings in the first quarter of 2023 surpassing those in the first quarter of 2020 by close to 3%.

That data comes from Eviction Lab, a Princeton University-based group that tracks eviction filings around the country, and the Northern Virginia Affordable Housing Alliance.

“Eviction filings are happening in Northern Virginia, and they’re happening at higher rates than we were seeing over the past few years,” says Jacob Haas, a researcher at Eviction Lab. “We don’t want to return to business as usual when it comes to evictions and housing instability. We were in an affordable housing crisis before the pandemic; evictions were harmful to a lot of families before the pandemic. There were millions of eviction cases filed each year prior to the pandemic. [But] we are returning to business as usual.”

Data published last month by the Northern Virginia Affordable Housing Alliance on filings in the first quarter of 2023 indicated that several jurisdictions were on track to meet pre-pandemic levels, thanks to the expiration of eviction moratoriums and evaporation of emergency rental assistance funds. Virginia’s eviction moratorium expired in June 2022.

In Arlington County, for example, eviction filings increased by close to 13% during the first quarter of 2023; in the city of Alexandria, about one in every 37 renters has faced an eviction filing in that time period. In Manassas and Prince William County, where eviction filings increased 2.4% over pre-pandemic levels, about one in 35 renters has faced an eviction suit.

The number of default judgments – automatic rulings made by judges in favor of the landlord when tenants fail to appear in court – also increased in several places. Default judgments in Arlington County increased by about 40% between March of 2020 and March of 2023, NVAHA reported last month. So too did default judgments in Fairfax County, which saw a 38% spike over that time period.

NVAHA found that eviction filings in Northern Virginia specifically overall ticked up .07% above pre-pandemic levels, with about 1 in every 57 renter households facing an eviction filing between January and March of this year. Across Virginia, Hass says, eviction filing levels are about 80% of pre-pandemic levels, though in some months that figure is higher.

The city of Alexandria, along with Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince William counties all have a stark rent-burdened population, NVAHA’s data show. More than 46% of renters in Fairfax County, along with 49% of renters in Prince William and Manassas, are rent burdened, which means they spend more than 30% of their income on rent.

“We really are living in a crisis,” Ingris Moran, lead organizer with Northern Virginia-based advocacy group Tenants and Workers United, said at a NVAHA panel last month. “One of the things we’re really seeing consistently in our community is rent increases [from] $100 up to $300 some years, and it’s leading to families moving out. … we’re seeing families self-evict.”