Clark County again tops state for evictions

Clark County recorded the highest number of eviction filings per capita in Washington for the third consecutive year, according to state data. Legal aid attorneys point to the widening gap between rental prices and incomes.

“Basically, people can’t afford rent,” said Ben Moody of Clark County Volunteer Lawyers Program.

Landlords in Clark County filed 2,275 cases to evict residents in 2025. That’s 61 more than 2024 and 566 more than 2023. But Clark County attorneys worry proposed state budget cuts, which could potentially eliminate legal representation for thousands of cases statewide, will impact tenants facing eviction.

“Clark County numbers are so high that we needed outside support to staff the eviction docket,” Moody said. “Unless something changes, we’re going to see more people who can’t afford to rent and then won’t have the same access they do now to assistance and resources — whether that’s legal assistance or rent assistance.”

Widening gap

Abby Popenoe, an attorney with Northwest
Justice Project, said a lot of the firm’s eviction cases are because of nonpayment of rent or unexpected, inflated fees.

“They miss one month of rent. They might be able to get back to being able to keep paying their rent, but because once the eviction process starts, the costs keep compounding … they’re really not able to catch up and then they end up being in eviction court,” Popenoe said.

The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Vancouver is $1,495, according to Zillow. A July study found that a Clark County renter would need to earn more than $33 an hour or work 83 hours weekly at a minimum-wage job to afford a one-bedroom unit.

Moody pointed to the widening gap between residents’ incomes and rental costs. And rental assistance in Clark County is extremely scarce, with new funding often drying up almost immediately.

“Housing isn’t elastic the way that some other things are,” Moody said.

Moody said if a food item, for example, is too expensive, people can just stop buying it.

“But you can’t do that with housing,” Moody said. “If we have so many more evictions here, it’s because we have a greater disparity between what people can afford and what landlords are setting their rates at.”

Cycles

In 2021, Washington became the first state in the nation to establish the right to a free attorney for tenants who cannot afford one in eviction cases. Advocates lauded it as a major win for tenants, but eviction defense lawyers say it’s been difficult to keep up with the need as evictions have surged.

State funding supports such organizations as the Northwest Justice Project and the Clark County Volunteer Lawyers Program.

The Washington State Office of Civil Legal Aid is seeking $3 million in supplemental funding for the fiscal year that begins in July. Without it, the program will lose 17 lawyers, and there will be “nearly 2,000 individuals facing eviction each year without an attorney,” according to the office’s request.

Popenoe said lawyers can help tenants reach agreements with landlords in many eviction cases, like giving tenants time to find other options and stay housed.

“If someone doesn’t have an attorney, they’re really unlikely to be able to identify any potential defenses that they have. If there’s any place where the landlord has not followed the law, they’re probably not going to know about that. If they do, they’re going to have a hard time fighting that on their own,” Popenoe said.

She added that without legal representation, the chance increases that someone won’t be able to find a new place to live.

In 2024, about 460 people in Clark County cited eviction as the reason they were homeless, according to data from Council for the Homeless.

“Once you get into the cycle of housing instability, everything just becomes harder,” Moody said.