According to a 2020 report by the Aspen Institute, an estimated 30 million to 40 million people in the U.S. are at risk of eviction due to the COVID-19 housing crisis. Previously, a national moratorium on evictions from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) protected these households from losing their homes. But on July 31, that moratorium expired.

If past trends hold, the upcoming eviction crisis will lead to higher rates of COVID-19 infection, especially as new variants emerge. The scale of this problem exposes fundamental problems in our labor market and social safety net.

In this piece, we show that the eviction threat looms the largest in Black-majority locales, creating the potential to decimate entire neighborhoods.

Eviction, or forced relocation, is a critical and understudied mechanism that drives residential mobility, particularly in inner-city neighborhoods among low-income families. According to the U.S. Public Health Service Act, eviction means any action by a landlord, owner of a residential property, or other person with a legal right to pursue eviction or possessory action to remove or cause the removal of a tenant, lessee, or resident of a residential property from said residential property. A landlord must have legal cause to make a tenant vacate a rental unit prior to the ending of the term of tenancy, with the most common causes relating to the nonpayment of rent, “nuisance laws” involving too much usage of 911 services, the rental unit faces health or code violations, illegal activity, or a violation of the lease or rental agreement. Some states also include reasons such as health and safety violations or the sale of the rental unit as acceptable reasons for eviction.

Requirements for how and when landlords are required to file eviction documents with the court and how tenants must be notified that eviction documents have been filed vary by state and jurisdiction. The basic notion, however, is that when a tenant fails to pay rent, violates the terms of their lease, uses police services too often, or the rental unit faces health or code violations, the landlord files an eviction notice with the court. A trial date with the housing court is then set and the landlord and tenant have the right to present (or have their attorneys present) their cases.

Read the full article about the impact of the eviction crisis on Black communities by Carl Romer, Andre M. Perry, and Kristen Broady at Brookings.