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In 2015, landlords filed 51,203 eviction cases in Los Angeles County. That number sounds high, but it represents a relatively small share — roughly 3 percent — of all renter households in the county.

New national data compiled by the Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond, author of “Evicted,” suggests that America’s worst eviction epidemics are not in expensive, coastal cities. Rather, eviction is routine in Indiana and Michigan, and across the Southeast. California has far steeper housing costs. But the state also has a stronger safety net and more tenant protections.

The New York Times traveled to Richmond, Va., an unlikely epicenter of eviction, to see what happens when one community has so much housing instability. There, landlords file about three eviction cases for every 10 renter households, or 10 times the rate in Los Angeles County. One in five renter households in Richmond are pulled into this legal system, and one in nine walk away with a lasting eviction judgment.

With these numbers, based on 83 million court records dating to 2000, Mr. Desmond is trying to map for the first time where eviction is most acute. But his national picture is incomplete.