Evictions are emerging as a potent driver of racial health disparities, pushing Black mothers and their children into cycles of illness, stress and instability. Half of the Black women in a Detroit-area study reported experiencing an eviction, underscoring how disproportionately this crisis falls on Black renters and their neighborhoods.
Research from the SECURE Study — Social Epidemiology to Combat Unjust Residential Evictions — links both court-ordered and illegal evictions to higher risks of premature birth, a leading cause of infant death. Black mothers living in areas with more evictions face a 68 percent higher risk of delivering early, tying housing instability directly to life-and-death outcomes for their babies.
The harms ripple far beyond a single household. “A lot of the evictions that we document that are illegal are extremely violent,” said Shawnita Sealy-Jefferson, the study’s lead researcher. “Watching other people experience that is also a source of trauma. It’s not just the people that are directly being impacted by eviction, but their neighbors.”
She and her team found that 60 percent of participants reported high rates of adverse childhood experiences, compared with just 13 percent globally, and that eviction in childhood was linked to worse adult health. Sealy-Jefferson argues eviction should be counted as an adverse childhood experience, calling it “very traumatic” and warning that, without action, “it’s going to be our daughters’ problem.”
See: “Evictions hurt physical and mental health of Black mothers, new study shows” (June 24, 2025)
