Nearly 3 million children face eviction every year
We know that each year nearly 3 million households are evicted. But because there is little to no reliable eviction data, at the municipal, state, and federal, levels, we haven’t known who those evictees are. Now we do.
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) just released this study, A comprehensive demographic profile of the US evicted population, and the data is frightening.
The report says, “Here, we link 38 million eviction court cases to US Census Bureau data to show that 7.6 million people, including 2.9 million children, faced the threat of eviction each year between 2007 and 2016. Overall, adult renters living with at least one child in their home were threatened with eviction at an annual rate of 10.4%, twice that of adults without children (5.0%). We demonstrate not only that the average evicted household includes one child, but that the most common age to experience eviction in America is during childhood.”
“The most common age to experience eviction in America is during childhood.”
The study goes on to note, “We also find that previous studies have underestimated racial disparities in eviction risk: Despite making up only 18.6% of all renters, Black Americans account for 51.1% of those affected by eviction filings and 43.4% of those evicted. Roughly one in five Black Americans living in a renter household is threatened with eviction annually, while one in ten is evicted.”
