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- Every year, 3.6 million evictions are filed in the US, disproportionately impacting women and people of color.
- Just 3% of tenants are represented by a lawyer, compared to 81% of landlords.
- Much of today's housing inequities stem from women and people of color's historical exclusion from property ownership in the United States.
- This article is part of a series called "The Cost of Inequity," examining the hurdles that marginalized and disenfranchised groups face across a range of sectors.
Linda Hutchison was $1,300 behind on rent when the electricity in her second-floor apartment was cut off.
Her landlord, a white woman, told her it was a problem with burst pipes in the basement – even though the electricity in the downstairs unit ran fine.
Hutchison, who has a spinal-cord injury, has had to use crutches since 2019, making it difficult to nail down a job. Despite her disability and unemployment status, she was consistently denied the rental assistance she applied for every month in Nebraska.
"I reached out to all the programs for help, but I never got a dime," said Hutchison, who is mixed race.
Shortly after her electricity was cut off, Hutchison found a white slip of paper taped to her front door: an order for termination of lease, with a date for a court hearing printed at the bottom.
The intersection of race, gender, and wealth
Cases like Hutchison's are emblematic of the 3.6 million evictions filed in the US every year. These evictions disproportionately fall on people of color. Census data shows that 21.7% of Black tenants were behind on rent in April, while 8.6% of white tenants were. About 19.5% of Hispanic and 22.2% of Asian tenants were unable to pay their rent.
"There's the dynamic intersection between poverty and race," said Shamus Roller, executive director of the National Housing Law Project, an organization that aims to advance housing justice for poor people and communities.
When it comes to gender, women face 16% higher eviction rates than men, which translates to thousands more women renters evicted than men, according to a study by the Eviction Lab.
That could be for a number of reasons. Single mothers tend to be more economically vulnerable, and younger children could create situations that could provoke landlords, Roller said. Studies also show that female tenants are much less likely to directly engage with their predominantly male landlords when they experience a crisis in their lives, like a job loss or health problem.
The gender disparities are even starker when race is factored in: The Eviction Lab study found that 36.3% more Black women were evicted than Black men between 2012 and 2016.
A history of systemic exclusion of women and people of color
Much of today's housing inequities stem from the fact that women and people of color have historically been excluded from property ownership in the US, according to Eric Tars, legal director at the National Homelessness Law Center.
"You can track things back to the founding of our country, where white and European settlers were explicitly allowed access to land and homesteading," he said.
These early exclusionary policies gave way to more recent practices like redlining and discrimination in federal housing and mortgage benefits.
"This all leads us to the present, where you have communities that have been systemically disinvested in and excluded from building wealth, jobs and employment - all in a system that's already stacked against them," Tars said.
The importance of legal representation
The historical exclusion from property ownership has meant that disenfranchised communities, unable to build economic wealth and secure a stable home, are often more likely to land in situations that lead to evictions.
When a tenant misses a payment, violates the terms of a lease, or breaks the law, their landlord can attempt to kick them off the property. If they can't reach a resolution, the landlord may then file an official complaint in court to begin eviction proceedings. The tenant must attend the hearing to challenge the eviction.
Hutchison was lucky enough to find a lawyer, Caitlin Cedfeldt, through the Legal Aid of Nebraska's Housing Justice Project. On March 3, Hutchison dressed "as best as I could on $900 a month" and appeared at the hearing with Cedfeldt. The case was dismissed in minutes.
"I was amazed," Hutchison told Insider. "Had I not gone in there with a lawyer, it would've been a whole other ballpark. The judge wouldn't have taken me seriously."
A lawyer can be instrumental in bolstering the chances of tenants successfully winning an eviction case, said John Pollock, a coordinator and lawyer with the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel (NCCRC). Tenants' success rate in court surges to 75% from 5% when they have legal representation, according to the NCCRC.
Even if a tenant loses their case, a lawyer can help minimize the consequences of eviction. For instance, they can help negotiate how much the tenant owes the landlord, or stop the landlord from filing the eviction on record, both of which can affect the tenant's credit and ability to obtain housing down the line.
But just 3% of tenants are represented by a lawyer, compared to 81% of landlords, according to data from the NCCRC.
"There's no industry of real-estate attorneys set up for low-income people. And the critical thing is that landlords know that: They operate based on the principle that tenants aren't going to have counsel," Pollock said. "There's no justice to the process."
Hurdles to ensuring fair access to legal aid
Some cities, including New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC, have passed laws that guarantee low-income tenants a right to a lawyer.
But tenants still face substantial barriers, even in those cities with a right to counsel.
One of the biggest hurdles is the lack of funding allocated to housing and eviction defense, said Dennericka Brooks, director of Legal Aid Chicago's housing practice group.
Distrust toward lawyers is another barrier, Pollock of the NCCRC said, describing a history of lawyers and legislators cooperating to steal land from communities of color.
"It's not the communities' problem - it's our problem," he said, adding that effective outreach and sensitivity to racial issues were keys to overcoming the distrust that's embedded in these communities.
Since winning her eviction case, Hutchison has moved to Dallas to find a job in customer-service data entry, which she hopes will allow her to work comfortably from home. While waiting for her new apartment's inspection to wrap up, Hutchison is working part time and living out of her car some nights to stay afloat.
"My future is hopeful," she said.