San Diego Rental Research › Eviction filings
In fiscal year 2024–25, 8,922 unlawful detainer (eviction) cases were filed in San Diego County Superior Court, close to the 8,788 filed in 2018–19, the last full year before the pandemic. That is 16.3 filings for every 1,000 renter households in the county, below the California rate of 20.9 and well below Riverside (31.5) and San Bernardino (35.0) counties.
Key numbers on eviction filings
- 8,922unlawful detainer cases filed in San Diego County, fiscal year 2024–25 (July to June)Judicial Council of California, Court Statistics Report 2026
- 16.3filings per 1,000 renter households, against 20.9 across CaliforniaOur calculation; renter households from the American Community Survey 2025
- 2,565filings in 2020–21, the low point, when COVID-19 protections limited evictions for unpaid rentCourt Statistics Report 2022
- 9,408filings in 2022–23, the highest year in the series, after those protections endedCourt Statistics Report 2024
- 6.9%of California's eviction filings, from a county with 8.9% of the state's renter householdsCourt Statistics Report 2026; American Community Survey 2025
Limited civil unlawful detainer filings. Source: Judicial Council of California, Court Statistics Report, Table 4a, editions 2020 to 2026. Fiscal years run July 1 to June 30.
How filings have moved since before the pandemic
An unlawful detainer is the court case a landlord files to recover possession of a rental. In San Diego County, 8,788 were filed in 2018–19. Filings fell to 2,565 in 2020–21, when court emergency rules and state COVID-19 protections limited evictions for unpaid rent, and rose again as those protections were phased out. They reached 9,408 in 2022–23 and have eased since, to 9,005 in 2023–24 and 8,922 in 2024–25, down 0.9% in the latest year. Statewide, filings were down 5.1% over the same year, to 128,894.
The neighboring counties show the same dip and recovery. The table gives each year's filings as the Judicial Council first published them.
| Fiscal year | San Diego | Los Angeles | Orange | Riverside | San Bernardino | California |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018–19 | 8,788 | 41,143 | 9,247 | 8,949 | 10,836 | 126,244 |
| 2019–20 | 6,483 | 30,506 | 6,934 | 6,109 | 7,312 | 92,091 |
| 2020–21 | 2,565 | 9,676 | 3,285 | 2,401 | 2,796 | 35,727 |
| 2021–22 | 5,175 | 20,303 | 6,235 | 5,124 | 6,205 | 73,326 |
| 2022–23 | 9,408 | 44,216 | 10,910 | 9,228 | 10,520 | 136,282 |
| 2023–24 | 9,005 | 46,825 | 9,436 | 8,141 | 9,571 | 135,793 |
| 2024–25 | 8,922 | 41,059 | 9,188 | 7,809 | 9,010 | 128,894 |
How San Diego compares
Raw counts mostly reflect how many renters a county has, so we divided each county's filings by its renter households. San Diego County had 16.3 filings for every 1,000 renter households in 2024–25, the fifth-lowest rate among the 14 California counties with at least 100,000 renter households. Orange County was at 18.9, Los Angeles at 21.5, Riverside at 31.5 and San Bernardino at 35.0. The lowest rate among these counties was Santa Clara (12.6) and the highest San Bernardino (35.0).
Put another way, San Diego County has 8.9% of California's renter households but accounted for 6.9% of its eviction filings.
Filings: Judicial Council of California, Court Statistics Report 2026, Table 4a. Renter households: Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2025 1-year, table B25003.
| County | Filings, 2024–25 | Renter households (ACS 2025) | Filings per 1,000 renter households |
|---|---|---|---|
| San Bernardino | 9,010 | 257,742 | 35.0 |
| Sacramento | 7,929 | 229,406 | 34.6 |
| Riverside | 7,809 | 247,915 | 31.5 |
| Kern | 3,116 | 108,634 | 28.7 |
| Contra Costa | 3,818 | 137,690 | 27.7 |
| Los Angeles | 41,059 | 1,905,634 | 21.5 |
| Fresno | 2,983 | 144,464 | 20.6 |
| Alameda | 6,019 | 292,495 | 20.6 |
| Orange | 9,188 | 487,203 | 18.9 |
| San Diego | 8,922 | 546,051 | 16.3 |
| Ventura | 1,623 | 100,831 | 16.1 |
| San Mateo | 1,765 | 118,290 | 14.9 |
| San Francisco | 3,436 | 245,610 | 14.0 |
| Santa Clara | 3,984 | 314,997 | 12.6 |
| California | 128,894 | 6,159,367 | 20.9 |
What a filing is, and is not
- A filing is not an eviction. Many cases settle, are dismissed, or end when the tenant moves out. The court statistics count cases filed, not households removed. San Diego's court did not report to the Judicial Council how its 2024–25 unlawful detainer cases ended, so we cannot say how many ended in a judgment for the landlord.
- Filings come after notice. In California a landlord can file only after serving the right written notice, such as a three-day notice to pay rent or quit, and most tenancies need a just cause to end. See our guides to three-day notices, just cause eviction and the eviction process, step by step.
- Residential and commercial cases are counted together. The statistics do not separate a home tenancy from a shop or office lease.
This is general information, not legal advice. Owners facing a possible eviction should speak with a landlord-tenant attorney before serving any notice.
Method and limits
- Filings. Column (I) of Table 4a, "Limited Civil Unlawful Detainer," in the Judicial Council's Court Statistics Report, one fiscal year (July 1 to June 30) per edition: the 2020 edition for 2018–19 through the 2026 edition for 2024–25. Earlier editions do not report unlawful detainer filings by county, so the series starts in 2018–19. The 2025 and 2026 editions were downloaded from courts.ca.gov; the Judicial Council's links to the 2020 to 2024 editions refuse automated downloads, so we used the Internet Archive's unaltered copies of those same files.
- Revisions. The Judicial Council revises earlier years in later reports but publishes county figures only for the latest year, so county figures here are as first published. Statewide, the revisions to these years are up to 2.3%: the 2026 report gives 129,206 statewide filings for 2018–19, not the 126,244 first published. Small year-to-year differences should not be over-read.
- Limited civil only. Most unlawful detainers are limited civil cases. The few that seek more than the limited civil ceiling are filed as unlimited civil cases and are not counted. The ceiling rose from $25,000 to $35,000 on January 1, 2024 (Code of Civil Procedure § 85, as amended by SB 71), so a few cases filed as unlimited before then would now count.
- Rates. Renter households are the Census Bureau's American Community Survey 2025 one-year estimates (table B25003), which have margins of error, and cover a calendar year while court years run July to June.
- Incomplete reports. Courts flag categories where their data are incomplete. San Diego's filing counts are not flagged in any year used here.
Every figure on this page was calculated by a script from the downloaded reports and checked by a second script on November 12, 2026, which read each year's filings again from a different table in the same reports (Table 5i), compared the statewide figures with the Judicial Council's ten-year trend, and re-derived the rates from the Census Bureau's Data Profile.
Sources
- Judicial Council of California, Court Statistics Report 2026, Table 4a (Total Civil Filings, by County and Case Type) and Table 5i, fiscal year 2024-25: courts.ca.gov/system/files/file/csr_2026.pdf
- Judicial Council of California, Court Statistics Report 2025, Table 4a, fiscal year 2023-24: courts.ca.gov/system/files/file/2025-court-statistics-report_0.pdf
- Judicial Council of California, Court Statistics Reports 2020 to 2024, Table 4a (Internet Archive copies of the Judicial Council's files), fiscal years 2018-19 to 2022-23: courts.ca.gov/news-reference/research-data/court-statistics
- U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2025 1-year estimates, table B25003 (Tenure), California counties, 2025: data.census.gov/table/ACSDT1Y2025.B25003
- U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2025 1-year Data Profile DP04, used for the independent check, 2025: data.census.gov/table/ACSDP1Y2025.DP04
Cite this study
McKee Properties. (2026). Eviction Filings in San Diego County, Year by Year. https://mckeecompany.com/research/san-diego-evictions/
The data behind this study is free to reuse under CC BY 4.0: download the CSV. Please credit McKee Properties and link to this page.
Questions about the data, or press inquiries: call (619) 435-7780 or email info@mckeecompany.com.
