Being forced to leave your rental home can harm health

Tuesday, June 14th, 2022 | carra86p | No Comments

Elinor Chisholm, Sarah Bierre, Cheryl Davies, Philippa Howden-Chapman*

Chisholm E, Bierre S, Davies C, Howden-Chapman P. Being forced to leave your rental home can harm health. Public Health Expert Blog. 14 June 2022. https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/pubhealthexpert/being-forced-to-leave-your-rental-home-can-harm-health/

Eviction, or a forced move from rental housing, is a common experience for New Zealand renters, yet we know very little about its effects. In this blog post we summarise our recent published study, based on Marsden-funded interviews with tenants who had been evicted. We found that eviction can harm health through causing stress and grief, and precipitating a move into homeless or to a risky housing situation. We argue that reducing the incidence and impact of evictions is an important public health and social welfare issue.

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