Women, especially Black women with children, face highest rates of evictions in Oklahoma

Sandra Gathron sat on a bench chatting on the phone and snuggling her 1-year-old granddaughter, Alaysha, near the elevators that lead to eviction court at the Oklahoma County District Courthouse on Aug. 22. Two other women sat alongside Gathron; one entertained Alaysha with a game of peek-a-boo.

Around the corner in the main hall outside the eviction courtrooms, Adonika Fuller waited quietly with her neighbor, Jerry Jones, for information. Fuller was there for her eviction hearing. Jones came as moral support for Fuller and their fellow neighbor, Jennifer Esquivel, who was discussing her eviction case with a Legal Aid attorney.

Next to Fuller and Esquivel, three other women waited for legal assistance. Across from them, one man in his senior years sat at the end of a bench next to five more women.

“Look around,” Fuller said. “What do you see? What do you see? How many women are here?”

Women represent about six in 10 eviction filings in Oklahoma County , according to Shelterwell, an Oklahoma City-based housing stability organization. The narrow demographic of Black women tenants with children, however, represents 28% of eviction filings nationally.

Legal Aid Services Oklahoma attorneys said the national trend of Black mothers facing the most evictions is evident in Oklahoma.

It’s generally clear which people at eviction court are tenants and who are landlords, mediators and attorneys. On this day, like most others, it was obvious that women of color outweighed any other tenant demographic.

Coincidence didn’t stack the day’s docket with cases against women of color.

Male tenants were also present and many people had already come and gone, but the majority of defendants present were women, mostly Black, several with their children.

According to Shelterwell, of tenants surveyed while facing eviction in Oklahoma County court, 63% were women, 70% were nonwhite, 61% were households with children and 92% said they were behind on their rent.

“Statistically, when outcomes aren’t good for a white man, they’re going to be slightly worse for a white woman, worse for a Black man and worse than ever for a Black woman,” said state Rep. Forrest Bennett, D-Oklahoma City.

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Racial and gender disparities in eviction court are often attributed to low-wage jobs, child care costs, single parenthood and wage gaps. But centuries of generational poverty, racist housing and credit practices such as redlining and exclusionary zoning still challenge 21st century Black mothers at alarming rates.

The Aug. 22 Oklahoma County eviction docket held 186 cases.

Redlining in Oklahoma: Trees and sidewalks hint at historical racism

A lack of generational wealth impairs many Black families, leaving them struggling financially, working low-wage jobs, paying more than they can afford for rent and facing evictions because of those struggles.

When white families were buying homes and building generational wealth throughout the 20th century, Black families often found themselves living in redlined neighborhoods, areas of town bankers had colored in red on maps to indicate large populations of people they considered poor credit risks and ineligible for mortgage loans. The areas were labeled fourth-grade or hazardous by the Home Owners Loan Corporation.

Desirable areas were shaded in green and blue on the maps.

Redlining was outlawed in 1968 with the passage of the Fair Housing Act, which prohibits racial discrimination in housing.

Despite the law, examples of racial discrimination persist. The U.S. Justice Department in 2023 announced a settlement resolving allegations that American Bank of Oklahoma engaged in ongoing lending discrimination by redlining in Tulsa’s historically Black neighborhoods that were the site of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

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American Bank was ordered to invest nearly $1 million in a loan subsidy fund, spend hundreds of thousands to increase credit in majority Black and Hispanic neighborhoods and to open a loan production office for Black and Hispanic residents.

Bennett’s House District 92 encompasses a swath of Oklahoma City including the downtown area, much of southeast Oklahoma City and part of northwest Oklahoma City. Bennett is part of a project tracking the damage redlining practices have caused to Oklahoma City neighborhoods since they were ostensibly outlawed.

A drive through Oklahoma City neighborhoods gave Bennett a snapshot of areas once redlined on maps. Midtown was once such a district, though modern development has masked its history and rehabilitated its value, Bennett said.

Historic homes with intentionally planted mature trees and streets with sidewalks were usually built in blue or green areas and were owned and occupied by white Oklahomans. Neighborhoods in the urban core lacking sidewalks and landscaping are likely to have been redlined on maps.

“You could have a Black couple and a white couple that were making the same amount, but a white couple’s ability to get a nice single-family home in a nice neighborhood necessarily meant that they were able to start building generational wealth,” Bennett said. “While a Black couple who may not have access to buying a home was continuing to rent, not building equity in a property and not having that as leverage later on when they needed it.”

A direct line exists from past racist housing policies that have not been fully corrected to today’s crisis of evictions among minorities, said Sabine Brown , housing senior policy analyst at the Oklahoma Policy Institute.

“Because Black families were largely prevented from purchasing single-family homes, you had Black families that were largely in the urban core, in multifamily housing,” Brown said.

Today, 96% of Oklahoma City’s residential areas and 81% in Tulsa are zoned for single-family dwellings only. Multifamily housing is limited to specific areas; many zip codes with the highest numbers of evictions are areas that were formerly shaded red on city maps.

Ongoing racism, gender discrepancies affect eviction rates

Nationally, Black Americans make up just 18.6% of all renters but they account for half of all eviction filings. In Oklahoma, Black tenants make up closer to 60% of eviction defendants.

Black women with children are the largest group filed against, comprising 28.3% of all eviction filings .

In Oklahoma, 61% of households facing evictions include children. That aligns with national statistics that indicate that when age groups are combined, children under 19 comprise more than 40% of people directly affected by the effects of evictions. Moving, changing schools, missing days of school, making new friends and other abrupt life changes can deeply affect children of all ages.

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Women make up two-thirds of the state’s lowest-wage workers , according to data from the U.S. Department of Labor. And a Black worker is 50% more likely, and a Hispanic worker 40% more likely, than a white worker to make minimum wage or less.

A wage of $19.91 per hour is needed to sustain a moderate two-bedroom domicile in Oklahoma.

Fuller, one of those low-wage workers at age 47, had an appointment after her court hearing for a drug screening to start working a new second job. Although her four kids are grown and live independently, Fuller said she will work about 100 hours per week to make ends meet.

Eviction looms large for Black women

Eviction Lab founder Matthew Desmond, said evictions are to Black women what incarceration is to Black men.

In his 2016 book, “Evicted,” Desmond wrote, “Poor Black men may be locked up, but poor Black women are locked out.” That statement still holds, said Jacob Haas, a research specialist at Eviction Lab at Princeton University, which Desmond helped establish.

“ Black men continue to be locked up and Black women continue to be locked out ,” Haas said.

Brown said that when men are incarcerated, women are left behind to support themselves and their children.

Evictions leave families scrambling to keep what they have

In 2022, full-time salaried Oklahoma women had a median weekly pay of $769, or 80.8% of the $952 median weekly pay of their male counterparts, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Oklahoma hasn’t raised its $7.25 minimum wage since 2009.

“Nowadays, it’s just trying to keep what we have,” Fuller said.

Fuller and Esquivel’s residence, Brickell Apartments, owned by Sand Hills to Brickell Apts LLC, wanted their rent immediately, or the women were out. Neither had the money to pay in full.

Esquivel, a 26-year-old single mother receiving no child support, left the courthouse feigning positivity but resigned to moving, though her three children, ages 4, 5 and 6, just started school.

“We’ll find something,” she said.

She said the costs of getting back to school caused her to be late on rent in the first place.

Now, her kids might face another first day at a new school.

Fuller left the courthouse on a quest to come up with $793 for this month’s rent and late fees plus $93 attorney fees so she could stay until her lease ends in October. She was angry. She said this was her first time ever being late on rent. Court records confirm she’s never been evicted. She hoped for some grace.

Even if she does find the money to stay, the eviction filing will always be on her public court record and could make future leases difficult to negotiate. Fuller said she does not receive any government subsidies for her rent.

Jones was frustrated because he wanted to offer Fuller or Esquivel a place to stay at his apartment until they could find a place, but knew having additional residents in his unit could get him evicted.

For people with Section 8 housing vouchers, an eviction can mean losing that benefit altogether.

Oklahoma legislators have failed to act on retaliatory and other evictions

Oklahoma is one of only six states without laws providing tenant protections against retaliatory evictions. Such a bill, House Bill 3095 , lost legislative interest this year and died in committee.

About 14 other bills relating to evictions were passed up this session. In 2023, a plain language bill passed the Legislature, requiring eviction documents to be written in clear and understandable language to those receiving them.

Point-in-Time counts in Oklahoma City and Tulsa identified evictions and housing insecurity as forces causing about one in four people to become homeless and a recent Legal Aid Services Oklahoma study found that 27% of the clients they queried had been homeless due to an eviction.

“If you’re a single person faced with eviction, you might be able to find a friend to couch surf or double up,” Brown said. “That becomes a lot harder if you’re a mom with children. We may not see so many of these women on the streets because they do have children, so they’re more likely to find shelter situations.”

Greg Beben, an attorney at Legal Aid Services Oklahoma, said he sees women, particularly Black women, flow through eviction court daily.

“This is what created the need for the Fair Housing Act in the first place,” Beben said.

“When people are boxed in by redlining, or boxed out of other neighborhoods by zoning, there are a lot of negative consequences you can still feel decades later.”

He said he considers the inequities seen in eviction court a result of decades of civil injustices and centuries of discrimination.

“This is just an unfortunate final consequence, but these discrepancies exist,” he said.

Heather Warlick is a reporter covering evictions, housing and homelessness. Contact her at 405-226-1915 or hwarlick@oklahomawatch.org .

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Women, especially Black women with children, face highest rates of evictions in Oklahoma