FHCCI Report on Marion County Evictions
The Stacked Deck: Eviction Filings in Marion County Townships and Neighborhoods
Our friends at the Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana have released their latest report on Marion County evictions, “The Stacked Deck: Eviction Filings in Marion County Townships and Neighborhoods.” The title says it all, the deck is stacked against tenants. Here are some highlights:
“The single greatest predictor of an eviction filing is the presence of a child in the home.”
High eviction filing rates are driven in part by rising housing costs and a lack of affordable rental units. Most Marion County renters spend at least a third of their income on housing, leaving little left over for other necessities and little room for savings. This makes them vulnerable to missing a rent payment and facing eviction.
According to Eviction Lab, in 2025, there were 14.2 eviction filings for every 100 renter households in Marion County. Eviction Lab currently ranks Indianapolis as having the sixth-highest eviction filing rate among the 27 cities it tracks. The state is faring no better. The state of Indiana had the third highest eviction filing rate (9 eviction filings per 100 renter households in the past year) out of the ten states tracked by Eviction Lab.
Among the nine townships in Marion County, in 2024, Warren Township has the highest eviction filing rate (16 filings per 100 renter households). The neighborhoods with the highest eviction filing rates—International Marketplace (38), Delaware Trails (30.5), and Southdale (26.6)—have nearly twice or three times the rate of the county overall.
Landlords in Marion County are filing evictions in superior court to avoid certain township courts that they believe are less advantageous to them, a tactic known as “forum shopping.” In 2024, 8.8% of evictions in the county were filed in superior court rather than in the township of origin, up from only 2.1% in 2021. Eviction cases in superior court are more costly and may result in less positive outcomes for tenants, and, until recently, had much less access to assistance for renters. Forum shopping has been targeted to avoid just a few township courts. A third of eviction cases filed on tenants living in Lawrence Township were filed in superior court in 2024, as were 20% of Warren Township cases, and 8% of Washington Township cases. In other townships, less than 1% of cases were redirected to superior court.
A past eviction, whether justified or not, can prevent a tenant from qualifying for future rental housing. The FHCCI has encountered landlords who deny or penalize tenants for eviction records from the past two years, others for five, seven, or ten years; yet others issue a blanket rejection of any past evictions at any time. Some explicitly state that they would deny tenants for a filing without an eviction judgment. Eviction sealing can help protect tenants from such unfair future denials although tenant screening companies may still capture inaccurate records that impact housing choice.
The behavior of landlords also plays a major part in high eviction filing rates in Marion County. Tenants often face retaliatory evictions when they report their landlords to the health department for substandard conditions. Serial evictors take advantage of cheap eviction filing fees to file repeated evictions on tenants, especially in Black neighborhoods. Several Indianapolis neighborhoods with high eviction filing rates also have high rates of ownership of single-family rentals by “mega-investors,” large corporations that often use automated eviction filings.
Indiana is nationally known for its lack of tenant protections and its easy eviction process for landlords. Indiana is one of only four states in the nation without a clearly defined statute allowing tenants to withhold rent if their landlord fails to make essential repairs or to make the repairs themselves and deduct the cost from their rent. TurboTenant, a property management software company, recently ranked Indiana as the “fourth best” state for landlords, due to its “10-day cure-or-quit” policy, its lack of limits on rent deposit or rents, and its “landlord-leaning small-claims courts.”
Eviction diversion programs have introduced court navigators and legal aid attorneys into courts in Marion County, which has slowed the pace of eviction hearings and contributed to an overall improvement of procedural issues and a fairer process for tenants. However, legal aid attorneys are limited by tenants’ lack of legal rights, and court navigators often struggle to find financial assistance and/or affordable alternate housing for tenants facing eviction.
I often quote a 2023 National Academy of Science report that stated, “We demonstrate not only that the average evicted household includes one child, but that the most common age to experience eviction in America is during childhood.” The FHCCI report offers another quote from Emily Benfer, former Chair of the American Bar Association’s Task Force on Eviction that is more sobering, “The single greatest predictor of an eviction filing is the presence of a child in the home.”
