NHLP Seeks Eviction Initiative Project Director
NHLP is launching a project on eviction prevention and tenants’ rights that will bring together lawyers, researchers and organizers, court staff and housing providers to increase public understanding of the social and health impacts of evictions and to support emerging policy and program innovations. We are seeking someone to direct the project.
BACKGROUND
Eviction and the cascade of negative outcomes that follow have a major and lasting impact on the health and well-being of children and adults. Eviction is associated with coronary heart disease, mental health conditions, higher death rates, and pre-term childbirths. For children, it is particularly devastating. Eviction takes years off children’s lives, sets them back academically, and results in emotional trauma, higher exposure to lead poisoning, and food insecurity. The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the necessity of housing to health, not only for the households at risk of eviction, but for public health as a whole. Yet, due to a lack of legal protections and financial supports, the pandemic has accelerated and magnified that already ongoing crisis and exacerbated health inequity along racial lines.
Due to a long history of structural racism and ongoing discrimination, Black, Native American, and Latino households in the United States experience higher rates of poverty and housing insecurity than white households. They are also more likely to rent, due to discriminatory policies mainly targeting white households for homeownership. Evictions in turn are tinged with racial bias, and disproportionately affect Black and Latino renters in particular. Research indicates that nonwhite renters face higher eviction rates, and in some cases, are more than twice as likely to be evicted than white renters. Evictions also fall particularly hard on Black women. Across their lifetime, 1 in 5 Black women are evicted, compared with 1 in 15 white women.
In response to the pandemic, the federal government and state and local governments have put forward innovative and novel policy approaches to address the nation’s eviction crisis. In recognition of the role of housing in health, policymakers have temporarily reformed the system and provided unprecedented levels of financial assistance to help stop and prevent evictions. While these policies are temporary, they indicate a rare policy window to address the COVID-19 eviction crisis, the underlying affordable housing crisis, and the role of landlord tenant law in perpetuating harm among low-income and historically marginalized communities.