Black moms and pregnant women forced out of their homes in metro Detroit face health and safety threats

Michigan law requires landlords to get a court order before evicting anyone, with 30-day notice for non-renewals and no retaliation allowed for repair requests. Detroit logged 20,370 formal eviction filings in 2025, but a social epidemiology professor's research finds that number captures only half the real picture, since many landlords skip the courts entirely.

The study, drawn from nearly 1,500 Black women in metro Detroit including almost 800 with a lifetime eviction history, found illegal evictions left more than a third of pregnant or postpartum participants with nowhere to live. Interview subjects described threats of violence, hotel stays paid for newborns, sudden weight loss, and lost custody of children after housing instability. Existing eviction-prevention programs, the researcher notes, largely address only the court-ordered half of the problem.

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