10-04-2025
Evictions on the rise in Knoxville with median rental listing price up 56% since 2020
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) — Knox County along with other communities in Tennessee are witnessing a housing crisis. With that, eviction numbers are continuing to rise in Knox County. A group of researchers and organizations teamed up to dive into this problem.
A 66-page report shows the results of the study done by the Appalachian Justice Research Center, Statewide Organizing for Community eMpowerment and Legal Aid of East Tennessee from September to December of last year. In Knox County, the median listing price for a home has risen 83% and rental prices have risen 56% since 2020. In that same amount of time, income has only increased roughly three percent.
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'What was interesting about Knoxville in particular is, there really wasn't a housing crisis up until 2020,' Dr. Solange Munoz with University of Tennessee Department of Geography and Sustainability said.
Munoz told 6 News that prior to her work with the Appalachian Research Justice Center, she was working on the housing crisis at an international level. She said up until the pandemic, Knoxville was affordable.
'I've been talking about this for over 10 years. Knoxville was safe. I arrived in 2015 and housing was cheap. During COVID, all of a sudden you had all of these people now that could work remotely. They didn't have to live in these big cities,' Munoz said. 'They wanted to live in ither places and East Tennessee was so much cheaper. People started to arrive here and rent started to go up.'
With the higher average rent prices and mostly stagnant household income, eviction court dockets are starting to pile up. Knox County's eviction court saw 361 cases in one day last month. Legal Aid of East Tennessee Managing Attorney Michael Davis said walking into court every week and seeing the sheer amount of people is hard.
'To be honest, it gets overwhelming even as an attorney that gets used to it and the process,' Davis said. 'Seeing the weekly churn of it. Seeing it from our end, dealing with our clients, getting to meet with them, getting to hear the desperation in their voice, the terror. Having to leave where the place that's been home in 10 days, it's crushing.'
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Legal Aid has been able to get 90 percent of its clients eviction judgments not placed on their record, allowing them to find new housing if needed. The study, conducted by the research center shows that the City and County could save roughly $507,000 a year if they keep Legal Aid funded. However, Yolanda Grant with Statewide Organizing for Community eMpowerment told 6 News that the impacts go beyond Knox County.
'It's starting to do that spreading and more and more people are becoming involved in this eviction process. Not just on the end of trying to help but actually being the person evicted,' Grant said. 'It can be from a teacher to an engineer. It can be those. I've had accountants as clients. It's not just an economic problem or issue that's going on.'
The report outlines the data compiled and visually shows the disparities between rent and pay as well as how the eviction numbers have increased. At the end of the report, the group also acknowledged some of the issues they came across, the biggest, lack of data availability. During the presentation, they noted it is hard to tell how many evictions there have been in the past year, let alone since 2020, because the courts here do it all on paper.
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We are told the funding that gives Legal Aid of East Tennessee the ability to help those going through eviction court is about to run out. The stop date for funding is May 31 of this year, meaning Legal Aid will not be getting the $600,000 of funding it has been getting.
You can find a link to the full report here.
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