Who Isn’t Paying the Rent?: Gender Discrepancies in Eviction

Much has been written in recent years about the unequal rate with which African American men face incarceration, and its subsequent impact on individual and community socio-economic security. However, there has been relatively little attention paid to the disproportionate rates of eviction confronting low-income African American women. Eviction has not received a significant policy response when compared with other large-scale determinants of urban poverty, despite the host of destabilizing effects that it brings into struggling communities.

Matthew Desmond addresses this gap in a recent study published in the American Journal of Sociology, “Eviction and the Reproduction of Urban Poverty.” Eviction more commonly befalls those with limited household finances, and the sudden loss of housing and forced migration to other living arrangements can weigh on the ability of individuals to maintain employment, academic performance, and mental health. Desmond examines the higher eviction rate among women in poor black neighborhoods and the role eviction plays in the reproduction of urban poverty.

Desmond’s work in Milwaukee involved mapping court-ordered evictions against residential block-groups, as well as extensive fieldwork and surveys of residents. The research confirms that eviction in low-income communities causes considerable disruption to residents. More than 1,000 families are evicted each year and are forced to move from one disadvantaged neighborhood to another. While these movements were previously explained by gentrification, urban renewal, or dissatisfaction with substandard conditions, Desmond shows that the scale of evictions dislocated more individuals than many sociologists previously acknowledged. Desmond found the number of persons evicted in Milwaukee during an average year rivals the number of those forced out of public housing in the much larger city of Chicago over an entire decade.

Eviction in disadvantaged African American neighborhoods is more than twice as likely to shape the experiences of women than it is to shape the experiences of men. Living in a high-poverty, black neighborhood in Milwaukee correlates with an 8.23 percent eviction rate, while this rate in impoverished white areas is less than 1 percent. Furthermore, the number of females appearing on court eviction records from both high-poverty and hyper-segregated neighborhoods exceed that of men by a ratio of more than 2.3 to one. When attempting to breakdown this discrepancy, Desmond finds that women in these neighborhoods are more likely than men to participate in the formal economy and are therefore over-represented on leases, which require proof of income. Likewise, women more often qualify for and receive public assistance, which provides financial resources along with the requisite proof of those benefits.

As Desmond further explains, participation in the formal economy and access to assistance often results in eviction by increasing women’s risk of being held solely accountable for rental payments as vulnerable “heads of household,” left to negotiate changing conditions with little support. Recent financial pressures such as increases in the average cost of rent without similar increases in the total amount of welfare payments or income earned, may further contribute to these trends. Women’s responsibility for childcare and their relatively lower earnings in the labor market leave them less able than men to make up for this difference.

Taken together, the incarceration rate facing African American men in high-poverty neighborhoods and the eviction rate facing African American women are not only comparable but, in fact, related. Namely, the degree to which these women labor in the formal economy often results from barriers erected for men as a result of their incarceration. While Desmond shows that these barriers often do not preclude previously incarcerated men from earning, they do keep them off leases and shift household accountability to females. As women with the least earning power struggle to keep pace in an economy of rising rents and food prices, it will be critical to address eviction rates to prevent urban poverty from moving further out of control.

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