Black Southerners And The Eviction Crisis

Affordable and stable housing has long been a precarious and stressful pursuit for many Americans. Housing costs across the country have risen, and evictions are becoming much more commonplace than in past years. In 2016, American property owners filed at least 2.3 million eviction claims. Princeton’s Eviction Lab, which recently released the nation’s largest eviction database, revealed that the Southern region is the area of the country’s most impacted by evictions and that Black renters are disproportionate the victims of the eviction crisis. Eviction Lab’s report revealed that nine of the 10 cities with the highest eviction rates are not only located in southern states but are also cities that are at least 30 percent black in population. This week we chat with Atlanta-based journalist Max Blau about why southern renters are losing their homes at such high rates, and we examine some of the social and political obstacles standing in the way of safe, stable and affordable housing for many African Americans.