According to a new study, Black women are evicted at shocking rates. Often illegally. And the toll on their health is no joke.
Legal or illegal, Black women are still the most likely to be evicted. And a new report found that Black women of reproductive age who have experienced eviction as adults or children reported poorer health outcomes.
We wanted to know why.
In a SECURE survey of more than 1,400 Black women in three different counties in Michigan, 50% had experienced a court-ordered or illegal eviction. The participants were not overwhelmingly single mothers or low income — meaning the majority didn’t have the characteristics typically associated with being evicted.
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“Our focus was to document the problem of residential evictions, and the strength of character and resistance strategies of Black women,” Dr. Shawnita Sealy-Jefferson says, lead author of the report.
Why does this matter?
Black women are more likely to be evicted than any other group because of reasons other than nonpayment of rent or lease violations. This study helps explain how these experiences contribute to worse health outcomes.
Evictions happen for several reasons, non-payment of rent is one, but the data suggests many other reasons, most of which should be illegal based on the Fair Housing Act — like sexual harassment, retaliation, and illegal lockouts, Sealy-Jefferson explains.
The study was not limited to low-income renters, those with low educational attainment, the unemployed, single or teen mothers, or other vulnerable families, she adds. And it surprised her that 50% of respondents experienced an eviction in their lifetimes, and almost half of those were illegal.
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