This week Maricopa County launched a new Eviction Prevention Pilot Program to mitigate evictions. Evictions are super easy in Arizona due to our Residential Landlord and Tenant Act which is highly tilted toward landlords and against tenants. It was passed in 1972 and hasn’t been changed much since.
Kudos to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, the county staff who put this together, and their partners at the City of Phoenix.
This is a public health intervention. Why? Because eviction isn’t just a housing issue. It’s a public health issue.
Housing instability is associated with worse physical and mental health, interruptions in health care, financial stress and, in the worst cases, homelessness and of course heat deaths. An eviction can leave a lasting record that makes finding the next apartment even harder, or perhaps impossible.
And we have plenty of opportunities for prevention here. Maricopa County Justice Courts processed more than 80,000 eviction filings in 2025… the third year in a row above 80,000.
How Will the Pilot Work?
Sometimes a household that normally pays its rent hits a temporary financial IED like a car repair, reduced work hours, a medical bill, funeral expenses or some other unexpected expense. They fall behind on the rent, late fees start piling up, an eviction gets filed, legal costs get added and pretty soon a relatively manageable problem has become a much bigger one.
Eviction Prevention Pilot Program | Maricopa County, AZ
In Arizona they’re often on the street in just 28 days just because they were 5 days late paying rent.
The new Maricopa County program tries to interrupt that chain of events before the eviction gets into the court system.
The $800K pilot will initially focus on four Phoenix ZIP codes with high eviction rates: 85008, 85040, 85041 and 85042. Eligible households with a temporary financial hardship can receive help covering up to two months of rental arrears.
The goal isn’t to simply hand somebody money. It’s to resolve the problem before lawyers, court costs and an eviction judgment enter the picture.
It’s also a prevention program. Instead of waiting until a family has lost its apartment and then spending public resources dealing with homelessness, disrupted schooling, health problems and emergency services, this intervenes when the problem may still be solvable with a relatively modest investment.
The City of Phoenix will add utility aid and case management, HOM, Inc. will administer the program, and the Arizona Multihousing Association helped develop the structure and recruit participating property owners.
Importantly, the County will collect, analyze and publish the data to see whether the pilot actually works.
It’s an approach that’s perfectly aligned with effective public health practice. Try a promising intervention. Target it where the need is greatest. Measure what happens. Figure out what works and what doesn’t. Decide whether to expand it. Publish your results so other jurisdictions can learn from your pilot.
Research so far on emergency rental aid shows that it can improve short-term rent payment and reduce anxiety about eviction, although rental help by itself hasn’t consistently produced long-term housing stability.
That makes this initiative — early intervention, landlord participation, utility assistance, case management and follow-up especially important.
More of this please
County supervisors around Arizona should keep an eye on Maricopa County’s results. If the numbers show this pilot prevents eviction filings and keeps families successfully housed, there’s no reason this kind of upstream approach should stop at four Phoenix ZIP codes.
That’s evidence-informed public policy. Identify the risk, intervene early, measure the results and scale what works and publish your work.
