Eviction filings are a measure of housing pressure, but they do not show how many renters ultimately lose their homes. In the Lake Houston area, filings are rising alongside rents: Kingwood's average monthly rent reached roughly $2,000 in 2025, the highest in the area, while the area's rental housing stock grew 55% between 2019 and 2024. Local nonprofit leaders say the pressures are showing up in eviction courts across Humble, Atascocita and Lake Houston.
The findings come from the Kinder Institute for Urban Research's 2026 State of Housing report, released June 16, which identified Humble, Atascocita and Lake Houston among the areas experiencing high rates of eviction filings, according to Community Impact. The Kinder Institute compiles the annual study to track local housing and demographic trends, and the 2026 edition coincided with the launch of a public dashboard developed with the city of Houston and Harris County housing authorities, offering counts for subsidized housing and additional affordability data.
Steve Sherman, a research scientist for the Kinder Institute, said growth in rental units has contributed to increased eviction notices in the region. He also pointed to a broader shift in local housing stock, noting that new multifamily housing growth has been largest in the outermost and innermost parts of Harris County, and that Houston now has more multifamily housing units than single-family homes. About 60% of Houston households are renters, Sherman said, and multifamily units are disproportionately renter-occupied, while roughly 75% of single-family homes in Houston are owner-occupied.
Rents Climb Across the Lake Houston Corridor
The numbers tell a consistent story of rising costs. The average Lake Houston area rent was roughly $1,600 per month, compared with an average Harris County rent of $1,401 per month. Kingwood's rental stock grew 46.1% between 2019 and 2024, while Atascocita's grew 15% and Humble's grew a more modest 1.6% over the same period; Aldine Northeast and Humble South, by contrast, each saw declines in rental units of 8.2% and 17.9%, respectively.
By 2025, average monthly rents had reached $1,993 in Kingwood, $1,763 in Atascocita, $1,619 in Aldine Northeast, $1,490 in Lake Houston, $1,408 in Humble South, $1,391.50 in Humble and $1,192 near IAH. Sherman said the majority of cost-burdened renters now represents a new threshold in these geographies. Cost-burdened renters spend 30% or more of their gross monthly income on rent, while severely cost-burdened renters spend 50% or more; a majority of renters in the study areas now fall into the cost-burdened category, with only around 27% reporting they are not cost-burdened.
Affordability Pressures Beyond Rent
Millie Garrison, executive director of Humble Area Assistance Ministries, said rising prices for food, gas and rent are among the main drivers of the increase in eviction rates, per Community Impact's report. Sherman separately noted that housing stress is showing up not just in rent burdens but in insurance costs and eviction rates more broadly. Local agencies have attributed the rising filings to a combination of growing affordability issues and the relative ease of filing an eviction case.
A 2026 survey of roughly 2,070 respondents by Entrata Property Management found that 20% of renters said they were saving to purchase a home. Virginia Love, an Entrata industry principal, said renters tend to prioritize saving through small daily financial trade-offs, directing savings toward immediate priorities such as financial security.
County-Wide Numbers Paint a Larger Picture
The Lake Houston-area trend fits into a wider county pattern. Kinder Institute researchers reported 76,300 legal notices of eviction linked to Harris County residences in 2024, according to kinder.rice.edu, while Texas Housers separately reported that 76,321 eviction cases were filed against Harris County residents that year, equating to about one in 10 renter households, per texashousers.org. Those two figures describe different measures of eviction activity and should not be treated as interchangeable counts.
Kinder Institute researchers mapped eviction filings across 144 neighborhoods spanning all of Harris County and found above-average filing rates in the county's northern suburbs, Houston's south side and portions of Katy in 2024. The county averaged one filing per 10 households that year, but some areas exceeded one filing per five rental households. Andrew Kim, cited in the same Kinder Institute research, said there is no single comprehensive reason why filings might be high in specific areas. Filing counts also do not equal the number of renter households ultimately removed from their homes: landlords may file multiple cases against the same tenant in a year.
More than half of renters in Houston, 52.6%, and in Harris County, 51.2%, are cost-burdened, spending more than 30% of their income on rent, according to the Kinder Institute's 2026 report, which also found that incomes are not keeping pace with rental and homeownership costs. The county added more than 30,000 multifamily units recently, with most new construction concentrated in the suburbs or exurbs. Separately, a Rice University Kinder Institute report found more than 75,000 eviction filings across Harris County in 2025, and the county's average annual filing count from 2022 to 2024 ran 30% higher than its 2010–2019 average, with filings exceeding pre-pandemic levels every year since 2021, according to Texas Housers.
Help for Tenants Facing Eviction
Humble Area Assistance Ministries, a multi-program social services nonprofit serving northeast Harris County and east Montgomery County, offers programs aimed at helping residents facing eviction or preventing eviction notices altogether, though eligibility rules vary by program. Garrison said HAAM helps about 100 families a day meet basic needs. Its homelessness prevention program provides community referrals, limited financial assistance and case management, while its unsheltered program offers outdoor shower access, sack lunches, limited financial assistance, employment assistance, vital record assistance, community referrals and case management. The nonprofit is located at 1302 First St. E. in Humble and can be reached at 281-446-3663.
Harris County Housing and Community Development, a county agency located at 1111 Fannin St. in Houston, helps provide assistance during eviction proceedings and can be reached at 832-927-4955. Lone Star Legal Aid, a Houston-based nonprofit law firm offering free legal assistance for evictions, is located at 1415 Fannin St. in Houston and can be reached at 713-652-0077. Separately, Harris County Commissioners Court approved fully funding eviction-diversion positions and expanding the program to three courts, according to abc13.com.
What Court Records Show About Outcomes
The countywide filing counts cited above do not establish what share of 2024 cases resulted in judgments for possession, writs of possession or documented lockouts, so they cannot be treated as outcome rates alongside the Kinder Institute's neighborhood filing rates. Harris County JP Public Access cautions that displayed case status may change and should be verified against the official case record. The diversion-program expansion described above does not, by itself, establish eligibility rules or countywide outcomes. As a separate, court-specific measure, The Texas Tribune, citing a Houston Landing analysis of court records, reported that default judgments in Judge Steven Duble's Harris County court had fallen 44% since January 2023 as of Nov. 30.
