A study conducted by Princeton University’s Eviction Lab in collaboration with the U.S. Census Bureau, “Who is Evicted in America,” identifies for the first time the number of individuals, as opposed to households, who face eviction each year. By matching evictions records with data from the Census Bureau, Eviction Lab researchers find that children under 18, particularly Black children, face the highest risk of eviction.
The researchers found that an average of 7.9 million people were threatened with eviction yearly between 2007 and 2016, over half of whom – 3.9 million yearly – received a judgement. Of the individuals threatened with eviction each year, an average of 2.9 million were children under the age of 18, 1.5 million of whom were eventually evicted. Children represented more than 40% of all individuals who face eviction throughout the course of a year. While the eviction filing rate for families with children was 10.4%, the rate for families without children was less than half of that rate (5.0%).
Most at risk of eviction, the report finds, are Black renters, who made up less than a fifth of renters across the country but accounted for more than half of evictions. The data revealed that one in five Black renters were filed against and that one in 10 were evicted. In contrast, just one in 24 white renters were filed against, and one in 40 were evicted. Rates of both filings and evictions for Hispanic and Asian renters were comparable to those of white renters.
Families with children fared worse. Over 10% of adults with children received an eviction filing in a given year, and 5.3% of adults with children were evicted. By comparison, 5% of adults living without children received a filing, and 2.4% were evicted. Black adults living with children fared even worse. Over 26% of Black adults living with children faced an eviction filing, and 11.6% were evicted. In comparison, 6.2% of white adults living with children received an eviction filing, and 3.9% of white adults living with children were evicted.
Lastly, the study examined rates of eviction in relation to income. The average eviction filing rate for the lowest-income households with children – households earning less than $20,000 annually – was 7.6%. The lowest-income Black households with children, however, were disproportionately more likely to face eviction than their white peers. The lowest-income Black households with children faced eviction rates of 13.1%, while the lowest-income white households with children faced eviction rates of 5.8%. Meanwhile, the highest-income white households with children, earning more than $80,000 annually, faced eviction rates of 2.3%, while the highest-income Black households with children faced average eviction rates of 8.4%. While eviction rates clearly decline as income increases, rates among the highest-income Black households with children were still 2.6% higher than the rates among the lowest-income white households with children.
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