Evictions

This website contains eviction statistics drawn from a dataset which matches court records with parcel records. We succesfully match more than 98% of eviction records to a parcel. Our records currently cover 2016-01-01 to 2024-01-29.

eviction rate calculations

Here is how we calculate eviction rates for each ownership network.

For each property, we count the number of days during which the current owner held the property and eviction records are available. We determine when the period of current ownership began using the CONVEY_DATE variable provided by the city assessor.
We divide the days of ownership (during the eviction-covered period) by 365.25, then multiply by the number of housing units at the property. The product is the number of housing-unit-years.
We add up all the housing-unit-years for each property in the network to calculate the network’s total housing-unit-years.
We assign evictions to a property’s current owner if the eviction was filed after the current owner bought the property, judging by the CONVEY_DATE field.
For each owner network, we count the total number of eviction filings (and orders) and divide by the total number of housing-unit-years. Then, we multiply the quotient by 100. The result is the network’s annual rate of eviction filings (or orders) per 100 units.

citywide rates

For reference, here are citywide eviction rates.

To calculate these, we divide the total number of (matched) evictions occuring at residential properties by the total number of rental units. Because this includes vacant rental units, our method results in slightly lower eviction rates than if we divided by the number of renting households.

Annual eviction totals in the City of Milwaukee
	at residential properties		rental units¹	per 100 units
	filings	orders	rental units¹	filings	orders
2016	10,862	5,406	145,371	7.5	3.7
2017	11,603	5,319	146,548	7.9	3.6
2018	11,416	5,056	148,023	7.7	3.4
2019	11,372	4,922	149,027	7.6	3.3
² 2020	7,512	2,496	148,720	5.1	1.7
² 2021	6,709	2,745	147,730	4.5	1.9
2022	11,666	4,669	147,403	7.9	3.2
2023	11,503	3,746	147,196	7.8	2.5
¹ Calculated from city parcel records.
² Various pandemic-era policy interventions, including moratoriums, reduced evictions during these years

by aldermanic district

Eviction filing and order rates by Milwaukee aldermanic district
	2016		2017		2018		2019		2020¹		2021¹		2022		2023
	filings	orders	filings	orders	filings	orders	filings	orders	filings	orders	filings	orders	filings	orders	filings	orders
first	14.4	7.4	14.9	7.2	15.2	6.7	15.6	7.1	10.2	3.6	8.0	3.4	15.2	6.0	15.1	5.0
second	15.7	7.6	17.3	7.2	18.0	7.6	18.6	7.5	10.9	2.8	7.9	2.9	19.1	6.9	20.6	6.3
third	1.3	0.6	1.1	0.5	1.1	0.4	1.3	0.5	0.8	0.3	0.8	0.3	1.6	0.7	1.5	0.6
fourth	4.3	2.3	4.7	2.3	5.4	2.4	5.1	2.1	2.7	0.9	2.9	1.5	4.4	2.1	4.4	1.7
fifth	9.2	4.0	9.5	3.5	9.3	3.8	9.0	3.2	5.9	1.2	4.6	1.5	10.0	3.7	10.7	2.9
sixth	9.6	4.7	10.3	4.9	9.5	4.5	10.2	4.5	6.9	2.6	6.4	2.8	8.9	3.3	8.1	2.6
seventh	12.5	6.2	13.4	6.3	13.9	5.8	13.3	5.7	9.4	3.0	9.5	3.3	12.4	4.7	11.6	3.7
eighth	7.1	3.6	6.7	3.3	6.1	3.0	6.1	2.9	4.9	1.8	4.2	1.9	7.0	3.3	5.8	2.1
ninth	4.3	2.0	4.6	1.9	4.0	1.6	3.9	1.7	2.6	0.8	1.8	0.8	10.7	4.2	14.2	4.1
tenth	6.5	3.0	7.3	3.1	6.7	3.2	6.4	2.8	4.2	1.5	3.4	1.5	7.8	3.1	8.1	2.7
eleventh	2.9	1.4	3.2	1.3	3.0	1.3	3.4	1.6	2.4	0.7	2.2	0.8	3.3	1.3	3.0	0.9
twelfth	7.3	4.0	7.8	3.8	6.2	3.2	5.6	2.9	4.2	1.6	4.4	2.1	6.1	2.8	5.3	1.9
thirteenth	3.3	1.4	3.2	1.4	3.8	1.7	3.2	1.6	2.8	0.9	2.9	1.1	4.4	1.7	3.1	0.9
fourteenth	3.4	1.6	2.9	1.3	2.6	1.3	2.3	1.1	1.7	0.7	1.7	0.8	2.7	1.2	2.1	0.7
fifteenth	13.6	7.1	15.1	7.3	14.7	6.3	14.1	5.8	9.9	3.4	9.8	3.5	12.0	4.9	10.7	3.5
¹ Various pandemic-era policy interventions, including moratoriums, reduced evictions during these years