My family is being evicted. Now what?
“I call this a state of emergency situation in the U.S. It’s not isolated to one city, county, or neighborhood,” |
Millions of American families currently face the threat of eviction. Our series “Now What?” looks closely at how parents and caregivers can support their children during this significant challenge.
Maybe you’ve been making partial rent payments, but now your landlord says you have to pay everything you owe or move. Maybe you are one of the few renters who have been able to get a lawyer and fight your eviction. Or maybe right now you are hastily packing your children’s toys and clothes because even with the pandemic moratorium, your landlord has found a way to evict you. Before the COVID-19 pandemic began, the majority of renters under the poverty line were paying 50 to 70 percent of their income on housing. Now, because of job losses and the stresses of the pandemic, 40 million people are at risk of losing their housing, including renters making up 14 million households with children. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that Black, indigenous, and Latinx people have died from COVID-19 at about twice the rate as Whites. Similarly, past studies show that many at risk of being evicted are Black or Latinx. “We’d Be Living in Our Vehicles” Christina’s husband, James, worked at a food processing plant in Pennsylvania. When more than a dozen employees got sick with COVID-19 in the spring of 2020, he was laid off and they were unable to pay their rent. Their landlord evicted the family of six, which includes Christina’s stepson, Elliot, who was 5; her daughter Lina, age 4; her 2-year-old, Mary Jane; and her 9-month-old baby, Alivia. They moved in with Christina’s mother, who is unable to work because of a chronic respiratory illness, and have made the new arrangement work for everyone. But Elliot suffered keenly from the move, which compounded the many other disruptions he experienced in 2020. “A lot has changed for him during the pandemic,” Christina says. “His behavior has been erratic and unpredictable. He has severe separation anxiety from my husband.” He also lied to his teachers, saying he lived in a tree with no running water or heat, with monkeys all around them. This led to a visit from child protective services to verify that he was indeed living in a safe, clean, and warm home with running water. Now he and his dad go to parent-child interaction therapy, where James receives real-time coaching on helping his son with difficult behaviors. At home Christina provides him with calming sensory toys. Her next oldest child, Lina, was 4 at the time of the eviction. “She took it all in stride’” Christina says. “She was like, ‘I get to go live at grandma’s!” Mary Jane, her third child didn’t handle it as well. “It was a hard transition for her because she is autistic and has low vision,” Christina says. “Autistic kids don’t like things to change. Things were out of place, so she would have meltdowns.” More Trauma Carol Hardeman, executive program director for the Hill District Consensus Group in Pittsburgh, a community organization that addresses the housing needs of low-income residents, says the pandemic is making a bad situation worse. “I call this a state of emergency situation in the U.S. It’s not isolated to one city, county, or neighborhood,” she says. “Many of our low-income residents were already lacking access to life-sustaining resources before COVID. Food, health care, everything you need to live.” The loss of jobs and child care has made families who were just getting by vulnerable to eviction and has put them in real emotional and physical danger. “I’m seeing more trauma,” Hardeman says. “I’m also seeing more of a health crisis overall. Anyone who gets evicted can become homeless, and that is more trauma on top of a public health threat. A parent and kids will not be able to social distance, sanitize their hands, and keep up with what the CDC has said to do to beat COVID.” Eviction and Mental Health Hardeman has seen the trauma of eviction and how destructive it can be. “I have seen eviction circumstances make a mother or a parent break up their family,” she says. “A parent may say ‘I’m going over here to my uncle’s house, and the kids go over to grandma’s house.’” Experts agree that merely being behind on rent puts parents at risk for depression and children at risk for developmental delays. When a family is evicted from their home, parents may be forced to spend more time looking for housing than employment and may only be able to afford housing in neighborhoods with higher poverty and violent crime. Having children increases the risk of eviction for a parent, and mothers are more likely to be evicted than fathers. Eviction exposes children to perils such as higher stress for parents and a greater likelihood of ongoing poverty with everything that it implies for a child’s health and well-being. Traumas that occur in childhood have a lasting impact on a child’s developing brain and body, affecting their physical and mental health for years after. However, parents can take measures to help their children weather the hardship of eviction and recover from trauma. What You Can Do Experts who focus on helping children overcome trauma name several ways parents and children can heal their bodies and brains. Frightening or dangerous situations cause stress hormones to flood the body, giving us a burst of energy so we can fight or run away. When stress hormones build up over time, they can cause chronic inflammation and health problems years or decades later. But physical exercise takes the “fight or flight” response full circle and helps flush stress hormones out of the body. Exercise can promote better sleep as well. Good sleep may be hard to come by during or after a stressful or traumatic experience. But making sleep hygiene a priority will help bring it back. Sleep hygiene means going to bed at a consistent time, having a relaxing bedtime routine, and keeping screens off for an hour before bedtime. Consistent bedtime routines can also make kids feel safer in a new place. Parents going through a disruptive event will naturally feel stressed themselves. This is normal. It may help to accept that no parent is perfect and that you are doing your best for your children. Taking time for a heart-to-heart with a relative or friend, or a few minutes each day to breathe deeply and notice something beautiful in the world can help you feel lighter. The more you stay calm and positive, the more calm and positive your kids will be. “They’re Going to Have Questions” Christina suggests it’s best to stay with family after an eviction, if that is a safe option for you. She also recommends researching all the different kinds of assistance available for renters and families during the pandemic. Moving in with family offers the children familiar surroundings and makes the move less disruptive. She says young children don’t need to know everything about why they are moving. “It depends on the child’s age and how much they understand,” she says. “They’re going to have questions. I told them our house was too small, and we had to move.” In order to protect the privacy of children and parents in our Britannica community, first names only are used in this article. The editors of Britannica for Parents do, however, routinely confirm the accuracy and integrity of all our sources. Learn More Crisis Services Canada: The Canada Suicide Prevention Service National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 PCIT International, “What Is Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT)?” [n.d.] Smith, Jeremy Adam, “How to Reduce the Impact of Childhood Trauma,” 2018 Smith, Melinda, Robinson, Lawrence, Segal, Jeanne, “Helping Children Cope with Traumatic Events,” 2021 |