Being evicted often means more than losing your home.

“It affects jobs, credit, everything,” attorney Tami Nida Arntzen recently told the Tri-Cities Area Journal of Business.

The number of people losing their homes and facing those dire circumstances is up in the Mid-Columbia.

Attorney Brooke Ledford, who works with Arntzen at the Northwest Justice Project’s Kennewick office, said more than 700 evictions have been filed in Benton and Franklin counties the past year, compared to fewer than 600 on average in the years just before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Foreclosures also have become a growing reality locally and around the state.

Benton County had 88 active pre-foreclosures as of June, putting it in the top 10 among the state’s counties, according to real estate data analytics firm BatchData.

Washington has a “contained but significant level of distress,” according to BatchData, with 2,485 properties in the pre-foreclosure pipeline over the last 12 months. Three out of four of those pre-foreclosures have already progressed to the Notice of Sale step, the final stage before auction.

A number of economics and real estate experts say they aren’t concerned about the uptick in evictions and foreclosures impacting the broader economy. Numbers are still below historic highs, and the housing market was due for a stabilization due to recent inflation and years of rising housing prices.

“Homeowners have record levels of equity, lending standards are sound, and inventory remains constrained,” Hoby Hanna, CEO of Howard Hanna Real Estate Services, told Yahoo Finance. “What we're seeing now is a normalization, not a collapse, as the market adjusts to new economic realities. For buyers and sellers, this is a market filled with opportunity and resilience, not instability or uncertainty.”

But for those who have lost their homes, it can be a chronically devastating event that piles onto already challenging circumstances, such as the loss of a job. And that can still affect whole communities, as more people are forced into homelessness and foreclosed homes bring down neighboring home values.

“It’s vets with disabilities who struggle to get in touch with the resources they need. It’s single moms with kids who have missed only one or two months of rent because they didn’t get their child support or because of an injury,” Hannah Swensen, the managing attorney for the Spokane Housing Justice Project, previously told nonprofit news outlet Investigate West. “It’s elderly residents who can’t keep up with rent increases because it's more than their Social Security can handle.”

Princeton University’s Eviction Research Network reports that for the past 33 months, 1 in 47 renter households in Washington state faced an eviction filing, roughly 45% above the pre-pandemic normal.

Between May 2024 and April 2026, Benton and Franklin counties saw eviction filings for 21.4 and 23.7 renters per 1,000 renter households, ranking them at No. 8 and No. 7, respectively, and above King County.

Ledford said that she’s already handled or is handling 50 active eviction cases in 2026 alone, matching her numbers from last year. As for the precipitating cause of those evictions, she and Arntzen said a job loss or even two in a two-adult household often come up.

The job market has declined in the Mid-Columbia over the past year. While June’s unemployment rate of 4.2% is lower than the month prior and remains below the state average of 5.2%, it is higher than the 3.7% recorded in June of 2025. Additionally, 700 more people were working and a thousand fewer people were receiving unemployment benefits compared to June 2026.

But even those who haven’t seen a major change in income are finding it hard to keep up with rent payments.

“Fixed income is being priced out,” Ledford said. “This is even happening in subsidized housing.”

That’s despite increased eviction aid and protections. Along with an eviction moratorium during the Covid-19 pandemic, there was increased federal rental assistance and a mandatory mediation program. In 2021, the Legislature implemented a right to counsel for those facing eviction. State lawmakers last year instituted a cap on rent increases statewide, with a maximum of 10% a year, or 5% for mobile homes.

Neither the Benton-Franklin Rental Owners Association, Rental Housing Association of Washington nor the Washington Landlord Association responded to the Journal’s request for comment. But landlord representatives have decried the increased eviction protections as placing a burden on property owners.

Arntzen and Ledford acknowledged landlords are also facing financial pressures like their tenants. Many mom-and-pop rental companies are selling off their properties. But eviction exacerbates problems not just for individual tenants, but the broader community.

“You don’t find yourself in an eviction when everything is going great,” Arntzen said.

Tenants facing eviction can go to: nwjustice.org/eviction-help.