JUDY WOODRUFF: Across the U.S. every year, millions of people are forced out of their
homes.
While these evictions are usually thought of in economic terms, a problem of housing
supply and income, a growing body of research is showing that evictions also take an enormous
toll on people's health.
William Brangham recently traveled to Richmond, Virginia, a city with the second highest eviction
rate in the nation.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: For Sergeant Larry Trotter and Deputy Juan Survellon of the Richmond
Sheriff's Office...
MAN: Hello? Sheriff's Office.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: ... this is what a typical morning looks like.
SGT. LARRY TROTTER, Richmond City Sheriff's Office: The average for us would be anywhere
from 40 to 50 evictions a day.
MAN: Go ahead, put your shoes on. I'm going to need the dog be taken out as well.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: They crisscross the city serving evictions.
SGT. LARRY TROTTER: I get there, and people want to curse me out. But I understand that.
So, you have got to give them their chance to vent, because they're losing their house,
their home.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: It's a scene that unfolds in Richmond more often than almost anywhere
else in the country. And those evictions can stay on a renter's record for at least a decade.
MARTIN WEGBREIT, Central Virginia Legal Aid Society: In the city of Richmond, there are
roughly 18,000 eviction lawsuits filed every year.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Martin Wegbreit is an attorney at the Central Virginia Legal Aid Society,
a nonprofit that represents and advocates for low-income tenants. He says Richmond's
eviction rate spiked for many reasons
MARTIN WEGBREIT: We have a shortage of affordable housing. We have a poverty rate of 25 percent
in the city. We have gentrification. We have a history of racial segregation, state-sponsored
racial segregation. So it's all of those factors combined.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Virginia has long been considered a friendly state for landlords, with a host
of laws that make it cheap, quick and relatively easy to evict tenants.
MARTIN WEGBREIT: The filing fee to file an eviction lawsuit in Virginia is $58. By comparison,
in Alabama, it's $250.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: But that ease also exacts a real toll on the people being evicted.
Latisha Lee is a single mother who lives in public housing in Richmond.
When you get that knock on the door, what is that like?
LATISHA LEE, Richmond Resident: It's scary. Like, your heart will drop, and you don't
know what to do. And, like, in my case, in most -- a lot of other people's cases, they
don't have nowhere else to go. Like, where they're at is where they depend on to lay
their head every day.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Lee works seven days a week as a home health aide, feeding, bathing and
caring for elderly clients, but, even so, she says she's constantly afraid she won't
have enough to pay her rent.
LATISHA LEE: They will put it on your door and just walk away. And, sometimes...
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: That's the notification on the door that says, you're being evicted.
Get out.
LATISHA LEE: Mm-hmm. They will give you a certain -- like, they will let you know, like,
if you still haven't paid this by this day, then you have to be gone within a matter of
this time, that the sheriff would be there.
And that happened to me like three or four times.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Lee says she's always been able to come up with enough money to avoid
eviction. But she says her family is still living right on the edge.
They had to recently move for a more pressing issue. Her last place made her son Nyshawn's
(ph) asthma much worse.
LATISHA LEE: He do the inhalers, he do treatments. He do a Flonase, and then he has actual medicine
he takes.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: That's a lot for a 4-year-old.
LATISHA LEE: Yes. But he done got used to it. He know how to do it all by himself.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: She says their old apartment had rats in the walls, and air vents were
covered in mold.
LATISHA LEE: My doctors even said we can't be in the apartment. We got to leave, because
it's a health hazard.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: The majority of low-income renting families in the U.S. spend over 50
percent of their income on housing. That's according to Princeton's Eviction Lab.
And according to Kathryn Howell and Ben Theresa of Virginia Commonwealth University. That
often forces families to accept substandard housing after they have been evicted.
BENJAMIN TERESA, Virginia Commonwealth University: This is a problem that is disproportionately
felt by black people, and in particular black women.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: The pair has spent the last few years mapping exactly where evictions
are happening in Richmond.
KATHRYN HOWELL, Virginia Commonwealth University: When you look at the preponderance of unsafe
and unfit structures, you see a lot of overlap. In the neighborhoods where we have high eviction
rates, we also have high numbers of code violations in these buildings.
DR. MEGAN SANDEL, Boston Medical Center: It really is where you live that actually may
be the most important part of your health.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Dr. Megan Sandel is a pediatrician at Boston Medical Center who has written extensively
on the links between housing and health. She led a team of researchers who interviewed
more than 20,000 families in five cities.
DR. MEGAN SANDEL: We found that those families that were homeless and the families that were
behind on rent had very similar adverse health outcomes, which signaled to us that homelessness
is bad, but behind on rent is just as bad for kids' health and their parents.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: A 2018 report out of Seattle found that mental health was the most commonly
cited complaint of those facing eviction, including varying levels of depression, anxiety
and insomnia.
And even for families not facing eviction, housing instability can be just as detrimental.
CARMEN CANDELARIO, Richmond Resident: I have to continue to make believe that everything
is OK.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Back in Richmond, Carmen Candelario has been living paycheck to paycheck
for years. She now works two jobs, a translator for a local hospital and a hotel banquet server.
CARMEN CANDELARIO: And my pictures had the dots everywhere.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: The mold growing on your pictures?
CARMEN CANDELARIO: Yes.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: She and her daughter have moved four times in the last eight years because
she says the homes were all unsafe to live in.
A little over a year ago, she moved into this rent-subsidized apartment. But, almost immediately,
her 12-year-old daughter, Amidah (ph), started having health problems.
CARMEN CANDELARIO: She had a lot of breathing problems. She had a lot of hives. She had
a lot of fever, shortness, out of breath, which I thought was due because of asthma,
but we were allergic to the apartment.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Candelario complained about what she said was frequent mold and dampness
in the apartment. But she claims the landlord ignored her. She believes it's still making
her daughter sick and says it's caused a new problem for her.
CARMEN CANDELARIO: So, last year, she missed out on 27 days of school. Within that 27 times
of her being absent, I also called out 27 times.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So that you could be home with her when she was sick?
CARMEN CANDELARIO: And taking her to her doctor's appointments and picking her up from school.
I'm on my last lifeline, because if I continue to call out due to health issues, I am fired.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Last fall, Richmond's Mayor Levar Stoney unveiled a pilot program to help
about 500 families avoid eviction over the next year. The program set aside nearly half-a-million
dollars to help tenants pay overdue rent.
LEVAR STONEY (D), Mayor of Richmond, Virginia: Housing is foundational. It's the vaccine
to poverty.
And so if you are able to have a safe, quality roof over your head, and then that gives you
the ability to put food on the table, that's going to help you rise up that economic ladder.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Meanwhile, Latisha Lee says she's tired of having to live in places that
she says make her son sick, but she can't afford anything better right now.
Does he understand any of this stuff that's going on?
LATISHA LEE: I don't think he does. He just know he tired of being sick. That's all he
could tell me is, "Mommy, I don't want to be sick no more."
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Really?
For the "PBS NewsHour" I'm William Brangham in Richmond, Virginia.