Last week, the Arizona Office of Economic Opportunity reported a record number of employed Arizonans. Yet evictions in the state’s largest county only continue to climb.

Last month, Maricopa County saw the highest number of eviction filings since 2016 at almost 7,700.

Adam Chapnik is a research specialist with the Eviction Lab at Princeton University. He says rent prices in Phoenix have risen by about 30% on average since the pandemic began.

That has led to more people losing their homes. 

“That's a pretty massive increase and wages did not really follow that. So a lot of the eviction filings we're seeing are simply because people fell behind, their rents went up and they could not keep up with that growth," Chapnik said. 

The overall eviction rate last year in Maricopa County approached 2019 levels, before pandemic-related moratoriums were put in place.