Rising Evictions Linked to Preterm Birth Risk Among Black Mothers, Study Finds
Black women living in neighborhoods with increasing eviction threats face a sharply higher risk of delivering preterm babies, new research reveals.
A new study has found that Black women who live in neighborhoods with rising eviction threats face a significantly higher risk of giving birth prematurely, a serious public health concern that can have lifelong consequences for infants.
The research, led by Dr. Shawnita Sealy-Jefferson of Ohio State University and published in the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, shows that Black mothers living in areas where eviction filings increased from before to during pregnancy had a nearly 70% higher risk of preterm birth (PTB) compared to those in more stable housing environments.
Dr. Sealy-Jefferson explained that the study focused not on whether participants themselves were evicted, but rather on the impact of simply living in a neighborhood where other people were facing eviction threats. These threats, even without actual displacement, can create a pervasive environment of stress that affects entire communities.
“What we're talking about in this paper is just living in a neighborhood where you are living in a community with other people who have an eviction filed against them,” Dr. Sealy-Jefferson said.
She noted that landlords often use eviction filings not necessarily to remove tenants, but as a financial tactic to extract additional fees, penalties, and rent from low-income residents who are desperate to stay in their homes. Research has shown that these financial pressures can increase housing costs by as much as 20% for vulnerable renters.
Even when eviction isn’t personally experienced, living in neighborhoods where friends, family, and neighbors are regularly threatened with eviction can be deeply traumatic, according to Dr. Sealy-Jefferson. In many cases, these communities are tightly knit, and seeing someone’s belongings thrown out on the curb—sometimes illegally—is a distressing sight that carries lasting psychological weight.
“These are communities where people have lived their entire lives,” she said. “They have deep bonds and deep connections with their neighbors.”
Eviction filings, she added, should be recognized as a form of violence that reverberates throughout the neighborhood.
“I think there needs to be a recognition of eviction as a source of violence at the community level,” Dr. Sealy-Jefferson said.
She called for robust federal housing assistance, rent control, fair wages, and more vigorous enforcement of tenant protections. Current policies, she argued, often fall short in protecting tenants from predatory practices and illegal evictions.
“We need structural solutions to this problem, not individual-level solutions,” she said.
The study is part of the larger Secure Study (Social Epidemiology to Combat Unjust Residential Evictions), which investigates how housing instability impacts the mental and physical health of Black mothers. Dr. Sealy-Jefferson emphasized that housing and reproductive justice are inextricably linked.
“This evidence suggests that the threat of eviction, so just eviction, finally being increased at the neighborhood level, is a threat to the reproductive justice of black mothers,” Dr. Sealy-Jefferson said.
Dr. Sealy-Jefferson emphasized that neighborhoods are an area where policy can have a significant impact. “They can be a site of effective and appropriate intervention,” she said.
She urged lawmakers to work directly with affected communities when developing solutions, cautioning that poorly designed policies could unintentionally harm the very people they are meant to help.
“Without the evidence, we aren't able to have a conversation about what possible solutions are,” she said.