PORT CHARLOTTE \u2014 The number of evictions in Charlotte County is rising.<\/p>\n
According to Florida Housing Data<\/a>, in 2025 there were about 41 evictions in process per 1,000 households, an increase from about 37 in 2024.<\/p>\n In 2023, there were 31 per 1,000 households; in 2022, it was 30 per 1,000; in 2021, it was 20 per 1,000 and in 2020, it was about 23 per 1,000 as COVID began.<\/p>\n The end of the decade, in 2019, had 33 evictions per 1,000 homes.<\/p>\n Evictions are also rising in DeSoto and Sarasota counties, according to Florida Housing Data.<\/p>\n In DeSoto County, in 2025, it is about 37 evictions per 1,000 households, a jump from 2024, which had 8 evictions per 1,000 households.<\/p>\n In Sarasota County, evictions in 2025 were 32 per 1,000 households, up from 28 evictions per 1,000 households in 2024.<\/p>\n WHY THE INCREASE?<\/p>\n Florida Gulf Coast University Professor Shelton Weeks said there are a number of reasons for increased evictions.<\/p>\n Weeks is the Lucas professor of real estate and director of the Lucas Institute for Real Estate Development & Finance for the university.<\/p>\n For starters, Weeks said, local rent prices going down actually has a lot to do with the number of evictions going up.<\/p>\n Weeks said he recently read a paper about the people leaving their overpriced housing to move to a cheaper option.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen rental prices go down, it can make the option to give up your home and move into a rental marginally more attractive,\u201d Weeks said. \u201cThink about this: if, say, your house payment is $2,000 a month and rent\u2019s close to the same amount, you have a financial incentive to really try to stay.\u201d<\/p>\n Economics plays a quick part.<\/p>\n \u201cBut when rent is several hundred dollars a month lower, people might think, \u2018well, from a cash flow standpoint, I\u2019d be better off just walking away from this,\u2019\u201d Weeks said.<\/p>\n Weeks said people will make those kinds of decisions to leave their home or apartment when their budgets are \u201cstrained.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhich is a lot of folks these days,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He pointed to \u201cpersistent inflation\u201d during the last several years along with the cost of living in the state.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve had a lot of upward pressure on it from a variety of factors, and we\u2019re in a market where wage growth has been notoriously slow,\u201d Weeks said. \u201cSo, when you put those together, a lot of households are very challenged right now from a budgetary standpoint, and that\u2019s always going to contribute to delinquency.\u201d<\/p>\n Weeks also said sometimes people fall into hard times. That can result in evictions, too.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you\u2019ve got this continual pressure for a long period of time, and then life happens, somebody hits a little bump in the road, somebody loses a job or gets their hours cut back, or somebody gets sick and can\u2019t work, you\u2019re really at risk for getting into financial difficulty,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Weeks said he has concerns over the price of rent compared to how much people in Florida get paid.<\/p>\n Weeks and others monitor cost-of-living trends in the \u201dWaller, Weeks, and Johnson Rental Index.\u201d<\/a> It identifies overvalued rent markets.<\/p>\n Weeks said they found rent went up drastically after 2022\u2019s Hurricane Ian in Fort Myers and Cape Coral, with an average price of $2,300 per month. The average cost is now $600 less.<\/p>\n Apartments are in the \u201cupper teens or low 20 (percentile)\u201d in terms of vacancy, he said.<\/p>\n Many apartments, he said, are giving months free to get renters.<\/p>\n \u201cThose sort of conditions are out there and are probably going to persist for the next couple of years,\u201d Weeks said. \u201cThe problem is, if you go to your landlord and say \u2018hey, my rent\u2019s too high,\u2019 they might tell you to pound sand. And then if you actually move, you\u2019re going to incur that switching cost.\u201d<\/p>\n Weeks said he could see the trend of evictions increasing continuing.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I don\u2019t expect it to be dramatic,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n As for the local eviction numbers, themselves, Weeks said the eviction numbers are \u201cnothing like we saw in the great recession\u201d from 2007-09.<\/p>\n Weeks \u2014 as well as data sites like Florida Housing Data \u2014 did not have great recession eviction numbers readily available, but Weeks said the number was \u201cseveral times more than we\u2019re seeing now.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018I COULDN\u2019T KEEP WITH IT\u2019 Despite evictions not being nearly as high as in the early 2000s, some residents are still feeling the strain.<\/p>\n Ethan Hall, a former resident, switched Charlotte County, Florida, for Charlotte, North Carolina due to his rent increasing drastically back in the spring 2022.<\/p>\n \u201cWith the overall cost of living and how few jobs there are, I couldn\u2019t keep up with it,\u201d Hall said. \u201cMy one-bed, one-bath apartment was going from $1,500 a month to $2,000.\u201d<\/p>\n The rent increase to $2,000 was at the Lakes of Tuscana in Port Charlotte.<\/p>\n