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‘I lost everything’: Black women get evicted more than anyone else. A looming eviction crisis will make it worse
Romina Ruiz-Goiriena and Kevin Crowe, USA TODAY
Mon, April 4, 2022, 9:24 PM·22 min read
"I haven't had time to feel sad, because I have to figure out how I am going to move forward with my life," Chambers said. Chambers was evicted from her home weeks after her nursing contract ended. After consistently paying her rent for years, her landlord denied her four extra days to pay her rent, and served her 60-day notice.
AUBURN, Washington — The green-sided house with the manicured lawn and juniper trees was more than a home to Nicole Chambers. It was proof she was a good woman, a good nurse, a good mom.
Now, the eviction order she found cruelly silent on the dark green laminate countertop signaled she was about to lose the life she had worked so hard to build. Her sons had texted her a photo of it when they found it taped to the red storm door earlier that afternoon, but a part of her didn't want to believe it was true.
The hair on her neck stood up. Her feet were heavy on the wood floor. Her mouth was dry.
How could everything unravel so quickly, she thought.
For Chambers, her troubles began when she lost her nursing contract several weeks earlier, days before rent was due. A week later, Chambers asked her landlords for four more days to pay the rent.
Nicole Chambers takes a selfie during one of her nursing shifts.
She felt it was a fair request. The 44-year-old nursing assistant had paid her $2,490 monthly rent for four years without incident. She always took care of the house, putting any extra cash toward refreshing the paint or decorating. And her landlords knew how hard she had been working in COVID-19 wards treating intensive-care patients up and down the Pacific Northwest.
But the letter in her hand stated she had 60 days to find a new place.
Several months later, the mother of three was living in the only apartment she was able to find with a fresh eviction on her record in north Seattle– it had no heat, no hot water in one of the bathrooms and no yard.
“I worked all my life, I have raised my kids alone, with no help and no child support and now I have lost everything," Chambers said.
Chambers is far from the only Black woman whose life was upended after a landlord quickly pursued eviction. Black women are more likely than any other group to be evicted, according to a USA TODAY analysis of four years of local and national housing records and data from the University of California, Berkeley. Black women renters get filed against at twice the rate of white women renters nationwide. King County in Washington state has one of the highest eviction filing rates for Black women, with landlords filing against Black women at five times the rate of white renters, in some cases over less than $10 in back rent.
For Black women like Chambers, an illness, car trouble, noisy children, hours cut at work or losing a job altogether could easily become grounds for eviction. And experts warn fading pandemic protections may cause an avalanche of evictions in the coming months — and it’s highly likely Black women will once again suffer the most.
“It’s always been the case that evictions turn families’ lives upside down and make it even harder for families to find safe, stable homes in the future. These devastating effects fall disproportionately on Black and brown women and children,” said Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
Other findings of the USA TODAY investigation include:
Black women are more likely to be single parents and listed as leaseholders. Black women have the highest probability of being given nuisance citations from the police, which can result in eviction. They earn on average less than other demographics. These factors are driven in large part by structural racism, with many studies concluding that Black women are judged more harshly in school, the workplace and the court system.
The end result is generations of Black women struggling to keep roofs over their heads - falling further behind in the seismic wealth gap and being put at higher risk of ending up homeless, in prison or dead. Women and children experiencing housing insecurity and homelessness are more prone to adverse health problems, including maternal mortality, hypertension, arthritis, mental illness, tuberculosis, substance abuse, victimization and unsafe sexual practices, as well as criminal activity and barriers to education and employment.
"This kind of disparity doesn’t happen by chance," said Diane Yentel, CEO and president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition in Washington, D.C.
Graphic novel: An eviction crisis for Black women
Imagine you missed a rent payment. Now, you could lose your home in less than a month. This is how it happens. See the story
Eviction drives housing insecurity
Chambers had bills: car payments, insurance, utilities and three cellphones. Her sons were eating more because of COVID-19 school closures.
To find a new place, she would need to pay first, last and a security deposit, meaning Chambers would have to cobble together nearly $7,000 and was already starting at a deficit.
Chambers didn't have savings. Nearly 3 in 5 Americans report having less than $5,000 in savings to cover an emergency.
She struggled to find a new job. Many assisted-living facilities didn't want to hire new nurses and preferred to keep staffing low because of the high risk of spreading COVID-19.
Chambers was among the millions of women taken out of the workforce after the onset of the pandemic because of quarantine measures and other economic disruptions. The massive loss of jobs saw the highest number of Black women unemployed in 40 years.
Months later, after finding a new contract with limited hours and a much lower salary than before, it was too late. Chambers' landlords still wanted her out. Chambers received texts from her landlords twice a week: "You're going to ruin my credit score." "I'm going to therapy because you're making me depressed."
During the first two years of the pandemic, the halt in residential evictions ordered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was intended to keep an estimated 40 million people like Chambers safely housed.
But there were loopholes.
Chambers’ landlords could evict her if they intended to sell the property. This was one of the only ways owners could circumvent the patchwork of national and local protections in King County and Washington state.
Long before the pandemic, the eviction system was designed to be fast, cheap and easy – for landlords, not tenants. In Seattle, if tenants want to contest an eviction, they have to send a letter via fax or USPS mail. They might want to gather supporting documents and make photocopies, eating away more time. All of this can mean missing work to respond to a summons.
Without it, they forfeit any chance of staying in their homes.
In most states, tenants respond to an eviction summons by appearing in court for their hearing. Research has found many tenants confuse summons for eviction orders and abandon their homes.
State laws in Alaska, Arizona and North Carolina allow eviction summonses to be served to a tenant as little as two days prior to a hearing, leaving them with little time to prepare, let alone to be able to take off work to show up to court. Only six of 39 states that specify a minimum summons period require summonses to be served more than a week before a hearing date, according to an analysis of eviction laws and procedures commissioned by Congress executed by the federally funded Legal Services Corporation and the Center for Public Health Law Research at Temple University in Philadelphia.
“Anytime you add an administrative step that people take by themselves, you are increasing the risk of an informal eviction,” said Michele Thomas, director of policy and advocacy for the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance.
And when women do reply, little to no safeguards exist to prevent the eviction from taking place.
In one King County case, a Black woman who is legally blind, in a wheelchair, fighting congestive heart failure, diabetes and kidney disease, and was on dialysis treatment three times a week, was being evicted for non-payment from her apartment that was paid in part with a $1,000 federal housing voucher commonly known as “Section 8.” She needed to pay the remaining $711 each month.
She was behind two months and owed $1,589.75, including charges.
The woman faxed a letter from the public library to her landlord’s lawyer explaining that her attempts to repay within the 14-day notice had been rejected and explained how an eviction would disrupt her and her two children living with autism.
In this letter dated Jan. 13, 2020, a Black woman who is legally disabled, has kidney disease and was on dialysis treatment three times a week was being evicted for non-payment from her apartment that was paid in part with a $1,000 federal housing voucher commonly known as “Section 8.”
“It is not understood why the landlords are so persistent to evict such an individual in my condition…I am homebound and hardly attentive to any other subject but medical concerns and my home,” she wrote.
In a letter dated Jan. 1, 2020, another Black woman in King County asked if she could come up with a payment plan. She owed $1,500.
“Truth is I fell behind in rent due to having car issues that resulted in paying for the repairs so I will have adequate & reliable transportation to travel to daycare, school and work. I’m working with some other agencies that are willing to help pay the balance so my daughter and I don’t become homeless,” the woman explained.
Records show both resulted in evictions.
In a letter dated Jan. 1, 2020, a Black woman in King County asked if she could come up with a payment plan after falling behind in rent because her car broke down. She explained she needed to fix the car first to be able to go to work and her daughter's daycare, without which she would have lost her job altogether setting her back even more.
‘I lost everything’: Black women get evicted more than anyone else. A looming eviction crisis will make it worse
Romina Ruiz-Goiriena and Kevin Crowe, USA TODAY
Mon, April 4, 2022, 9:24 PM·22 min read
"I haven't had time to feel sad, because I have to figure out how I am going to move forward with my life," Chambers said. Chambers was evicted from her home weeks after her nursing contract ended. After consistently paying her rent for years, her landlord denied her four extra days to pay her rent, and served her 60-day notice.
AUBURN, Washington — The green-sided house with the manicured lawn and juniper trees was more than a home to Nicole Chambers. It was proof she was a good woman, a good nurse, a good mom.
Now, the eviction order she found cruelly silent on the dark green laminate countertop signaled she was about to lose the life she had worked so hard to build. Her sons had texted her a photo of it when they found it taped to the red storm door earlier that afternoon, but a part of her didn't want to believe it was true.
The hair on her neck stood up. Her feet were heavy on the wood floor. Her mouth was dry.
How could everything unravel so quickly, she thought.
For Chambers, her troubles began when she lost her nursing contract several weeks earlier, days before rent was due. A week later, Chambers asked her landlords for four more days to pay the rent.
Nicole Chambers takes a selfie during one of her nursing shifts.
She felt it was a fair request. The 44-year-old nursing assistant had paid her $2,490 monthly rent for four years without incident. She always took care of the house, putting any extra cash toward refreshing the paint or decorating. And her landlords knew how hard she had been working in COVID-19 wards treating intensive-care patients up and down the Pacific Northwest.
But the letter in her hand stated she had 60 days to find a new place.
Several months later, the mother of three was living in the only apartment she was able to find with a fresh eviction on her record in north Seattle– it had no heat, no hot water in one of the bathrooms and no yard.
“I worked all my life, I have raised my kids alone, with no help and no child support and now I have lost everything," Chambers said.
Chambers is far from the only Black woman whose life was upended after a landlord quickly pursued eviction. Black women are more likely than any other group to be evicted, according to a USA TODAY analysis of four years of local and national housing records and data from the University of California, Berkeley. Black women renters get filed against at twice the rate of white women renters nationwide. King County in Washington state has one of the highest eviction filing rates for Black women, with landlords filing against Black women at five times the rate of white renters, in some cases over less than $10 in back rent.
For Black women like Chambers, an illness, car trouble, noisy children, hours cut at work or losing a job altogether could easily become grounds for eviction. And experts warn fading pandemic protections may cause an avalanche of evictions in the coming months — and it’s highly likely Black women will once again suffer the most.
“It’s always been the case that evictions turn families’ lives upside down and make it even harder for families to find safe, stable homes in the future. These devastating effects fall disproportionately on Black and brown women and children,” said Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
Other findings of the USA TODAY investigation include:
- In King County, Black women accounted for 16% of evictions while making up only 5% of the renter population.
- Eviction proceedings are mostly formalities – even if a tenant owes rent and can come up with the money. Hearings often last minutes and tenants are rarely given relief. It takes three weeks on average to get evicted in Washington state.
- Among the top evictors in King County were corporate landlords who had received subsidies and tax breaks for affordable housing.
- Many tenants who receive eviction notices end up abandoning their homes without challenging the eviction, often because they don’t know how to do so. When they don't respond or show up to court, this leads to what is called a default judgment in favor of the landlord, meaning tenants have days to vacate the property. Of the King County filings reviewed by USA TODAY, 44% resulted in a default judgment.
Black women are more likely to be single parents and listed as leaseholders. Black women have the highest probability of being given nuisance citations from the police, which can result in eviction. They earn on average less than other demographics. These factors are driven in large part by structural racism, with many studies concluding that Black women are judged more harshly in school, the workplace and the court system.
The end result is generations of Black women struggling to keep roofs over their heads - falling further behind in the seismic wealth gap and being put at higher risk of ending up homeless, in prison or dead. Women and children experiencing housing insecurity and homelessness are more prone to adverse health problems, including maternal mortality, hypertension, arthritis, mental illness, tuberculosis, substance abuse, victimization and unsafe sexual practices, as well as criminal activity and barriers to education and employment.
"This kind of disparity doesn’t happen by chance," said Diane Yentel, CEO and president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition in Washington, D.C.
Graphic novel: An eviction crisis for Black women
Imagine you missed a rent payment. Now, you could lose your home in less than a month. This is how it happens. See the story
Eviction drives housing insecurity
Chambers had bills: car payments, insurance, utilities and three cellphones. Her sons were eating more because of COVID-19 school closures.
To find a new place, she would need to pay first, last and a security deposit, meaning Chambers would have to cobble together nearly $7,000 and was already starting at a deficit.
Chambers didn't have savings. Nearly 3 in 5 Americans report having less than $5,000 in savings to cover an emergency.
She struggled to find a new job. Many assisted-living facilities didn't want to hire new nurses and preferred to keep staffing low because of the high risk of spreading COVID-19.
Chambers was among the millions of women taken out of the workforce after the onset of the pandemic because of quarantine measures and other economic disruptions. The massive loss of jobs saw the highest number of Black women unemployed in 40 years.
Months later, after finding a new contract with limited hours and a much lower salary than before, it was too late. Chambers' landlords still wanted her out. Chambers received texts from her landlords twice a week: "You're going to ruin my credit score." "I'm going to therapy because you're making me depressed."
During the first two years of the pandemic, the halt in residential evictions ordered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was intended to keep an estimated 40 million people like Chambers safely housed.
But there were loopholes.
Chambers’ landlords could evict her if they intended to sell the property. This was one of the only ways owners could circumvent the patchwork of national and local protections in King County and Washington state.
Long before the pandemic, the eviction system was designed to be fast, cheap and easy – for landlords, not tenants. In Seattle, if tenants want to contest an eviction, they have to send a letter via fax or USPS mail. They might want to gather supporting documents and make photocopies, eating away more time. All of this can mean missing work to respond to a summons.
Without it, they forfeit any chance of staying in their homes.
In most states, tenants respond to an eviction summons by appearing in court for their hearing. Research has found many tenants confuse summons for eviction orders and abandon their homes.
State laws in Alaska, Arizona and North Carolina allow eviction summonses to be served to a tenant as little as two days prior to a hearing, leaving them with little time to prepare, let alone to be able to take off work to show up to court. Only six of 39 states that specify a minimum summons period require summonses to be served more than a week before a hearing date, according to an analysis of eviction laws and procedures commissioned by Congress executed by the federally funded Legal Services Corporation and the Center for Public Health Law Research at Temple University in Philadelphia.
“Anytime you add an administrative step that people take by themselves, you are increasing the risk of an informal eviction,” said Michele Thomas, director of policy and advocacy for the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance.
And when women do reply, little to no safeguards exist to prevent the eviction from taking place.
In one King County case, a Black woman who is legally blind, in a wheelchair, fighting congestive heart failure, diabetes and kidney disease, and was on dialysis treatment three times a week, was being evicted for non-payment from her apartment that was paid in part with a $1,000 federal housing voucher commonly known as “Section 8.” She needed to pay the remaining $711 each month.
She was behind two months and owed $1,589.75, including charges.
The woman faxed a letter from the public library to her landlord’s lawyer explaining that her attempts to repay within the 14-day notice had been rejected and explained how an eviction would disrupt her and her two children living with autism.
In this letter dated Jan. 13, 2020, a Black woman who is legally disabled, has kidney disease and was on dialysis treatment three times a week was being evicted for non-payment from her apartment that was paid in part with a $1,000 federal housing voucher commonly known as “Section 8.”
“It is not understood why the landlords are so persistent to evict such an individual in my condition…I am homebound and hardly attentive to any other subject but medical concerns and my home,” she wrote.
In a letter dated Jan. 1, 2020, another Black woman in King County asked if she could come up with a payment plan. She owed $1,500.
“Truth is I fell behind in rent due to having car issues that resulted in paying for the repairs so I will have adequate & reliable transportation to travel to daycare, school and work. I’m working with some other agencies that are willing to help pay the balance so my daughter and I don’t become homeless,” the woman explained.
Records show both resulted in evictions.
In a letter dated Jan. 1, 2020, a Black woman in King County asked if she could come up with a payment plan after falling behind in rent because her car broke down. She explained she needed to fix the car first to be able to go to work and her daughter's daycare, without which she would have lost her job altogether setting her back even more.
