Theories abound as to why we have not witnessed a cascade of evictions. Some observers think that social policies, like the eviction moratorium, stimulus payments, extended unemployment insurance and rental assistance have staved off disaster. Others think “mom-and-pop landlords” who tend to deal with lower-income tenants have been more accommodating or reluctant to lose tenants than expected. A few commentators have pointed to problems with the data underlying predictions of an eviction tsunami, and to the existence of contradictory data. Another view is that a tsunami of evictions is indeed occurring, only we can’t see it: Even as courts halted formal evictions, millions of tenants faced “informal evictions” over the course of the pandemic, with landlords refusing to make necessary repairs or changing the locks without notice or using other means of harassment…

But regardless of how we arrived at the unexpected place of having fewer formal evictions than before the pandemic, what we can say in hindsight is that a figure of 40 million evictions was likely far too high. That’s because the data used for this estimate and several other early predictions was a poor barometer of likely evictions.