The Face of Eviction: Working Mothers Struggling to Hold On

With all the focus on the foreclosure crisis during this recession, far less attention has been paid to those being evicted from rental units. Instead of members of the middle class pushed to the brink by a job loss, people being evicted from rentals often were struggling long before the economic downturn, and the potential harm is even greater. If you're evicted from your McMansion, chances are you can still afford a one-bedroom apartment. If you're evicted from the tiny apartment you share with your children and perhaps other struggling relatives, where can you turn?

Determining who is most likely to be evicted and why seems an important step toward finding solutions to the problem instead of just throwing people on the street. Matthew Desmond, a doctoral student in sociology at the University of Wisconsin is preparing to publish his pioneering research tackling exactly those questions. He's concluded that the face of eviction is women -- generally working, typically black, often single mothers -- and that in many communities evictions have become an epidemic. "Just as incarceration has become typical in the lives of poor black men, eviction has become typical in the lives of poor black women," Desmond told the New York Times. One out of every 14 renters in Milwaukee's poor neighborhoods, where Desmond conducted his research, is evicted every year. Everyone in those neighborhoods knows the significance of an Eagle Moving truck rolling down the street: someone is losing their home today.

The reasons women are disproportionately affected are myriad. If a woman breaks up with her boyfriend or husband (or he abuses or abandons her), in almost all cases she becomes the primary care-giver, and has to pay for housing big enough for her family. Women are more likely to be unemployed, less likely to be paid a fair wage and more likely to have to rely on inadequate public benefits. Those are all factors the women themselves have little control over. Yet if they don't pay rent, they're out on the street. Some evidence even suggests that women are more likely to speak up about badly-maintained buildings, angering their landlords enough to find reason to evict them from what may have been an unsafe apartment.

If a woman suddenly becomes homeless, the rest of her life is much more likely to fall apart. Her kids often have to leave their schools because they no longer live in the correct neighborhood. The instability in her life may cause her to lose her job. Eviction exacerbates all of the forces keeping that woman in poverty in the first place. Desmond's praise-worthy research should be required reading for the lenders, law enforcement professionals and landlords in contact with the neediest women in our communities.

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