As Eviction Crisis Looms, Advocates Fear an Increase in Child Removals

Federal funding for struggling renters is running out in many states. The December 2020 relief package and the American Rescue Plan provided over $46 billion in emergency rental assistance that went directly to states, but now several, including Texas, New York, and Oregon, have used up their portion of those funds. This comes on top of the Supreme Court ending the federal moratorium on evictions in late August, leaving the 12 million adults who are behind on their rent at risk of losing their housing. One out of five of these renters lives with children. The calamity of eviction can result in additional dire consequences for families: having their children removed by child welfare.

An estimated 10% of child removals are due to inadequate housing, but advocates say this is likely an undercount. Nearly one-third of children who experience homelessness are separated from their families at the time of the shelter stay or had been separated at some point in the past. “Across many systems that we work with, we see a strong correlation between housing instability and child removals, [and] we are absolutely seeing children being removed from households that are facing housing challenges,” said Andrew Johnson, associate director of the Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH), which provides technical assistance, capital, and consulting to develop supportive housing. “When families are facing homelessness, the stressors connected to that, and the actions taken to prevent it, which could include pulling children out of school to visit various social service agencies, or being frequently late to pick them up from child care due to working longer hours — any one of these factors can have the domino effect of getting the attention of child welfare.”

In 2019, nearly 8 million children were “involved with a report of alleged maltreatment,” according to Casey Family Programs, a research organization focused on child welfare policies. Their research found most substantiated reports — 75% — involved neglect. However, the criteria for what is a substantiated claim of neglect vary from state to state, with major implications for children and their families. A 2017 study found that states with a higher standard of proof showed a 14% decrease in the likelihood that allegations would be substantiated as well as a 30% increase in family preservation, housing, and other supportive services. “While housing insecurity or homelessness by itself does not justify child removal under the law in Illinois, the reality is that it can lead to child removal at times or to prolonging reunification after a child has been removed,” said Sara E. Gilloon, managing director of the systematic justice division at Ascend Justice, a Chicago-based legal services and advocacy organization for individuals and families impacted by gender-based violence and the child welfare system. “Our system should be reformed to assist families struggling with poverty that often manifests as neglect, rather than investigating and punishing families over allegations of neglect rather than abuse.”

On September 4, 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention enacted a moratorium on most evictions which lasted eleven months and helped to prevent 1.55 million eviction filings nationwide, according to The Eviction Lab at Princeton University, which tracks eviction data. “Although eviction numbers currently are below what we normally see, evictions filings are still disproportionately affecting certain groups — renters of color and Black renters, specifically — like eviction filings before the pandemic,” said Jasmine Rangel, research specialist at The Eviction Lab. “There is a concern that we are setting the same disproportionately affected groups of people up for crises down the road, even with all of this help available. Housing assistance rules are confusing, and applying for rental assistance is not a straightforward process, and landlords sometimes don’t want to accept rental assistance.”

Rangel pointed out that a child in the home is the strongest predictor of an eviction. Many landlords view children as less than ideal tenants because of potential damage to the property and noise, and may be more motivated to evict a family than to evict someone without children. Further, landlords often turn away applicants with an eviction on their records, according to Evicting Children, a report by Matthew Desmond, Weihua An, Richelle Winkler, and Thomas Ferriss, which can prolong an evicted family’s homelessness.

While the impact of the end of the eviction moratorium is still playing out, advocates are very concerned that as families face housing instability, more child removals will occur as a result. “When child welfare agencies remove children who are in inadequate housing, it’s often not about the family, but because of a lack of available housing resources to place the family,” said Ruth White, executive director of the National Center for Housing & Child Welfare. “And reunification of children is a much bigger problem; if you are homeless, you have no chance of being reunited with your child. No one should lose their children because they are homeless.”

Even before the pandemic, child removals over charges of neglect “disproportionately impact Black and brown and immigrant families,” said Jessica Marcus, supervising attorney for law and appeals at the Brooklyn Defender Services’ Family Defense Practice. “The Administration for Children’s Services (ACS), New York City’s child welfare agency, is legally required to provide housing and work to help families, but instead of providing housing to families who need it, they will refer them to the shelter system, where the Department of Homeless Services may deny them shelter. Then ACS will cite inadequate housing as the reason for child removals, so families get caught between these two agencies. Every aspect of poverty is stressful, but instead of addressing the poverty, ACS accuses the parents of being inadequate, and will use the facts of their poverty — their lack of housing, etc. — as an example of neglect.”

Inadequate housing can factor into neglect allegations and impact child placement decisions. “When people are facing an eviction, there is real fear amongst families that child welfare agencies will use that against them, use that as a reason to remove their children,” said Jeanette Vega, co-executive director for leadership and policy at Rise, a parent advocacy organization in New York City. “We need to ask what is neglect, and what is poverty? COVID showed the reality that systems don’t support families, communities support families. During COVID, it was the local restaurants giving out free food, community groups giving out things like free diapers and groceries, that people here in the Bronx relied on. COVID showed what real support could be. If [child welfare services] are going to charge us with neglect and use that as a reason to remove our children, why would any parent who is struggling go to them for help?”

Mandated reporters of child abuse, which include teachers, often don’t have adequate training about the symptoms of economic insecurity and instead make assumptions about the parents, advocates say. “There is a lack of understanding about the difference between poverty and neglect and abuse with mandated reporters, especially in regards to Black and brown children,” said Erasma Beras-Monticciolo, co-founder and executive director of Power of Two, a social justice organization that promotes family healing and community cohesion. “A child that appears at school disheveled is immediately labeled as at risk, and often without finding out what is happening with the family. If they are experiencing homelessness, it might not be possible for the child to have clean clothes. Poverty and neglect should be separated, and there needs to be an education campaign about what poverty looks like not only for mandated reporters, like teachers, but also child welfare workers and government agencies.”

Mandated reporters may also call in child welfare because of a perception that they are getting a family needed resources, not putting them at jeopardy of having their children removed. “Many mandated reporters will report a family to child welfare with the expectation that they will then get help, but that is not what child protective services are equipped to do,” said Dr. Lindsey Rose Bullinger, assistant professor in the School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech who specializes in policy related to child well-being. “We might be putting the responsibility on the wrong people. For example, why is it that the family gets punished — rather than the landlord — when there are issues with the state of rental housing?”

Once a family does have a child welfare investigation, “it’s an uphill battle to disprove the allegations,” said Anastasia Rivera-Bonilla, litigation supervisor for family and civil defense at the Center for Family Representation in New York City. Their clients “are fighting every system imaginable: child welfare, housing, the police, etc. They are forced to jump through hoops that you wouldn’t believe to get their children back. And they often don’t have access to technology to access benefits, and don’t speak English, and their encounters with the people who are supposed to be providing services are not pleasant.”

There is evidence that housing vouchers and other forms of assistance not only prevent evictions, they also help keep families together. “A HUD study suggests that providing long-term rental assistance like a housing voucher helps reduce child separations and foster care placements,” said Ann Oliva, vice president for housing policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a research and policy institute that focuses on poverty and inequality. “Families that received priority access to vouchers were less likely to have a child separated from them compared to families that did not receive prioritized assistance. Vouchers can also reduce toxic stress for adults and reduce rates of intimate partner violence and issues with drugs and alcohol.” This is a timely issue, Oliva pointed out, as the Build Back Better economic legislation that Congress is currently debating includes a significant investment in housing vouchers that would reduce housing instability for about 300,000 low-income households.

And all of the emergency programs that were instituted during the first phase of the pandemic, including the moratorium on evictions, provide real-world information and hard numbers about what does work. They also produced additional benefits beyond housing, creating a positive ripple effect. “The moratorium allowed families to participate in preventative services and receive other forms of help, and now that it’s ended, much of that work is gone as well,” said Thomas Edwards, family law attorney and Equal Justice Works fellow at the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. “But the pandemic has also shown that we do know how to prevent homelessness. It’s shown what is possible, and we have to keep demanding it.”