Newport Daily News: Rhode Island leads the region in eviction rate

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- In 2016, there were 1,580 evictions in Providence, which breaks down to an average of 4.3 evictions every single day of the year. For the entire state of Rhode Island, there were 5,069 evictions in 2016, or nearly 14 a day.

In 2009, when there were 2,840 foreclosure deeds filed in Rhode Island, it was called a foreclosure crisis.

Providence's 2016 eviction rate, 3.82 percent, was nearly triple that of Boston in that same year (1.3 percent), according to new data from the Eviction Lab at Princeton University. This group is led by sociologist Matthew Desmond, whose 2016 book, “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City,” won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction in 2017.

Desmond, who hopes the site will yield evidence on which laws and public policies work best to reduce evictions, says that eviction is not a symptom, but a cause, of poverty. His book chronicled how evictions prompted a downward spiral for low-income families, often leading to unemployment, educational disruption for children, and loss of personal possessions and even access to public benefits.

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Courtesy of Newport Daily News