The Health Impact of Evictions

A slip of paper posted on a door can signal the beginning of a destructive process for children’s health. Each year, more than 2.3 million households receive eviction notices.1 Despite fair housing laws which ban discrimination against children and families, households with children are more likely to be evicted than childless households, even when controlling for family income and rent owed.2 The proportion of children in a neighborhood is a stronger predictor of eviction rates than neighborhood-level poverty, racial makeup, or proportion of single parent households.2 Nearly 1 in 7 children will experience eviction before their 15th birthday, including 1 in 4 children living in poverty.3 Eviction, like mass incarceration, police violence, or environmental contamination, disproportionately affects families of color and exacerbates health inequities. Because of generations of systemic racism, Black and Latinx households are more likely to be evicted than white households, with women of color especially impacted.4 Close to 20% of Black children will be evicted during childhood, compared with 11% of white children.3 The economic disruption of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has compounded this long-standing eviction crisis. In spring 2021, 1 in 5 renters with children was behind on rent, compared with 1 in 10 childless households.5 The pandemic has reinforced disparities in evictions, with households of color more than twice as likely as white households to fall behind on rent.5 Emergency aid has been slow to reach families and a patchwork of state and federal eviction moratoria are soon … Address correspondence to Dana Goplerud, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 624 N Broadway, Baltimore MD 21287, dgopler1{at}jhmi.edu, 410-955-4201