Evictions in Las Vegas are an urgent policy problem

More than 30,000 renters were evicted from their homes in Clark County in 2016, a 43 percent increase from the number of evictions recorded in 2009, according to data compiled by the Las Vegas Justice Court.

Op-Ed (Nevada)

Hugh Jackson
Nevada Independent
February 3, 2017
READ THE FULL STORY HERE

Tags: Housing: Eviction

Organizations mentioned/involved: Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada


DETAILS

There are a lot of reasons why Southern Nevada’s eviction rate is among the nation’s highest.

The transiency of Southern Nevada’s population has long been a convenient explanation for everything from crime to poverty to educational performance.

Yet there is no doubt that in good times and in bad, Las Vegas is a place where a lot of people come, and a lot of people go. “When you go, sometimes you skip out on the rent if you are poor,” said Barbara Buckley, the former Assembly speaker who directs the Southern Nevada Legal Aid Office, and thus knows both how eviction law was made and how it’s executed. If someone skips, the landlord may file an eviction case with the court because it can be more easily resolved than an issue of abandonment, Buckley said in an email exchange.