Immigrant neighborhoods and eviction: Hidden housing crisis?

Abstract

Poor renting families are experiencing the worst affordable housing crisis in decades. Although there is evidence of high eviction rates, in part due to this affordability crisis, the housing literature only recently began to examine this phenomenon. As a relatively new area of inquiry, the eviction literature has some glaring gaps. First, most studies are qualitative and focus on one locality at a time. Second, to our knowledge, no U.S.- based studies investigate eviction rates in immigrant neighborhoods. We aim to fill these gaps by using the Eviction Lab database and American Community Survey Data to determine whether there is an association between neighborhood-level eviction filing and eviction rates and the presence of immigrants in the neighborhood, after controlling for other neighborhood factors. At the national level, we find that neighborhoods with an increase in the U.S. and foreign-born non-white populations have significantly higher eviction filing and eviction rates than neighborhoods with U.S.- born non-Hispanic white residents. Within race/ethnic groups, variation by nativity seems to reflect larger segregation and settlement patterns of U.S. and foreign-born minority populations. In low immigrant cities, Black immigrants are more vulnerable to eviction than any other group.