Those most at risk of facing eviction proceedings and having to move out of their rental homes are infants and young children, according to a new analysis by The Eviction Lab and the U.S. Census Bureau that, for the first time, tallies the number of people threatened.
“What we realized is that children are the population most impacted by evictions. If you have children in your home, the odds of you being a victim of eviction are much higher,” said Juan Pablo Garnham, head of communications and policy at The Eviction Lab, in an interview with Noticias Telemundo.
“We found that 2.9 million children under the age of 18 are threatened by eviction processes every year, which is a huge number,” he said.
Of those children who are threatened by eviction, about 1.5 million, or 2 in 5 who face this threat receive an eviction judgment.
The recent study offers the most complete demographic picture of those living in rental housing and facing eviction proceedings, after researchers linked hundreds of thousands of eviction requests with detailed records from the U.S. Census Bureau.
“We were able to access official census data and the results are chilling numbers: We now know that, on average, 7.6 million people are threatened with eviction each year,” Garnham said. “This is data taken from 2007 to 2016 but, with the exception of when the pandemic eviction moratorium was implemented, the numbers remain fairly constant.”
Racial disparities, Latinos’ hidden numbers
According to the report, “adult renters living with at least one child in their home were threatened with eviction at an annual rate of 10.4%, compared to 5.0% for those without children.”
The gap was “particularly pronounced for Black women,” the data found, where filing rates were 28% with children present and 16% for those without children.
“Despite the fact that fewer than 1 in 5 renters in the United States are Black, about half of all evictions are against Black people, and that obviously includes…
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