Eviction Endangers Black Women’s Health

July 9, 2025

Recent studies conducted by Social Epidemiology to Combat Unjust Residential Evictions (SECURE) explore how housing and health are intertwined, with a particular focus on Black women. The findings from three reports are clear: eviction endangers Black women’s health.

Before these reports were published, research was clear that landlords disproportionately evict Black women renters. But there was little academic focus on how those evictions affected Black women. Now, thanks to SECURE’s research, we have a better understanding of just how harmful just how harmful losing one’s home can be to their physical and emotional wellbeing.

Here are the harrowing statistics: Of the Black women surveyed by SECURE, those who experienced eviction as children were 12 to 17 percent more likely to report poor health. Additionally, those who experienced eviction as children or who were evicted in adulthood were 34 to 37 percent more likely to report worse health outcomes than other participants in their age group. These negative health outcomes are potentially deadly; Black mothers in the Detroit area who live in neighborhoods with increased eviction rates face “a 68 percent higher risk of premature birth, a leading cause of infant death.”

We at the Woodhull Freedom Foundation are grateful to SECURE for highlighting just how critical access to safe, stable housing is to health, including reproductive health. It is abundantly clear that our human right to sexual freedom depends on our human right to safe, accessible, and stable housing.