Housing precarity: No residents should be at risk of housing displacement, especially in communities under redevelopment.

Insights & Analyses

  • Nationwide, Black renters were nearly four times as likely as white renters to live in neighborhoods with high or extreme levels of overall housing precarity risk.
  • The presence of children tends to increase with neighborhood-level eviction risk. While 34 percent of renters had children in neighborhoods with high or extreme eviction risk, 27 percent did in neighborhoods with lower risk.
  • Among all renters living in neighborhoods with elevated to extreme overall precarity risk, about 4 in 10 had household incomes less than $35,000.
  • In two regions, Fayetteville, NC and Richmond, VA, half or more of all renters live in neighborhoods with high/extreme precarity risk (77 percent and 50 percent, respectively).

Drivers of Inequity

Widespread housing unaffordability and weak renter protection policies leave many US households at risk of losing their homes, especially renters. In many US cities, historically redlined and low-income communities have become popular targets for high-end redevelopment. Investors capitalize on relatively lower property values to establish new businesses and build market-rate housing that is unaffordable for many existing locals, spurring new consumers and residents to enter the neighborhood. This gentrification of low-income neighborhoods has displaced many families who rely on the social networks, supportive programs, and language services in their home communities. Hundreds of millions of Americans live in cities and states without rent stabilization or other key tenant protections, which increases the likelihood they will be priced out of their homes or evicted without just cause. In recent years, the termination of eviction moratorium policies from the COVID-19 pandemic has created additional housing precarity for many low-income households who lost their jobs during the shelter-in-place mandate and struggled to pay their back rent.

Strategies

Grow an equitable economy: Policies to ensure stable and affordable housing for all

Strategy in Action

The Mission Economic Development Agency (MEDA) keeps San Francisco’s Latinx families in their homes. For several generations, San Francisco’s Mission District has served as an epicenter for the city’s Latinx and Spanish-speaking communities, including many local social service organizations, small businesses, cultural institutions, and political advocacy efforts. However, since the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, this working-class neighborhood has been a popular target for high-end housing and business redevelopment. Thousands of Latinx residents have been displaced from the Mission since 2000. Founded in 1973, MEDA has committed the last few decades to preventing and reversing this trend of displacement. A nonprofit direct service provider, small business lender, and affordable housing developer, MEDA operates a host of programs that support Latinx and immigrant families to build financial stability, retain affordable housing, and push for equitable housing, land use, and workforce policies. As part of its core strategies, the organization builds new affordable housing while also purchasing and preserving rent-controlled apartments throughout the city. Learn more.

Photo by Bruce Damonte. Reprinted with permission from Juan Mesa.

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