Eviction is recasting itself as a public health crisis, with new research showing it falls hardest on Black mothers and children in Detroit and across the country. Social epidemiologist Shawnita Sealy-Jefferson’s SECURE study found that Black mothers living in Metro Detroit neighborhoods with higher eviction filing rates face a 68 percent higher risk of premature birth, a leading cause of infant mortality in the United States. She warns that a pregnant person does not even need to lose their own home; simply witnessing a neighbor’s displacement or living under a constant threat of eviction can trigger “serious physiological symptoms” that increase the risk of preterm birth.
Sealy-Jefferson describes eviction as creating “spillover effects from the social environment of a neighborhood,” calling it a source of “neighborhood disorder,” “neighborhood violence,” and “vicarious racism.” Her mixed-methods research with 808 participants across three Michigan counties found that one in four reported experiencing eviction as a child, and those who had were up to 37 percent more likely to experience negative health outcomes later in life. Peer-reviewed papers emerging from the project conclude that eviction contributes to psychological stress among pregnant Black women, and report that more than half of those surveyed had experienced a court-ordered or illegal eviction at some point.
National data underscore how racially skewed this crisis has become. A 2023 Eviction Lab report found Black households accounted for 51 percent of all eviction filings and 43 percent of people evicted, despite making up only about 20 percent of renters in major U.S. cities. After pandemic protections ended, 24 percent of Black renters were still behind on rent, compared with 11 percent of white renters.
Sealy-Jefferson argues that these inequities are “not because of behavior or people’s poor choices,” but “because of the limits of opportunity and the limits of resources” faced by people in this racial and ethnic group. She contends that public health and housing justice are inseparable and insists that if society wants to solve the problem, “we got to start with reparations,” warning that “if we focus on individual solutions to a structural problem, it’s going to fail.”
See: “Eviction Is a Public Health Crisis, New Research Confirms” (August 2, 2025)
