Program Associate, Black Voters on the Rise, Legal Defense Fund
Senior Researcher and Statistician
Simone,iSimone is a pseudonym. a thirty-year-old Black woman renter, moved into a single-family house in Kern County, California, in 2005 with her four children ages six through nine.1Compl., United States v. Sorensen, Case No. 1:11-at-00164 (E.D. Cal. filed Mar. 25, 2011), ECF No. 1, https://www.justice.gov/crt/about/hce/documents/sorensencomp.pdf. All additional quotes in this section are from this document. She utilized public benefits as her main source of income to cover the house’s $725 rent. Her landlord was the owner-operator of the unit, controlling all aspects of the property’s management including collecting rent. Throughout her tenancy of around eight months, Simone experienced sexual harassment from her landlord, who repeatedly offered to reduce her rent in exchange for sexual favors.
In one of these instances, Simone’s landlord exposed himself to her and forcibly touched her breasts when she went to his house to pay rent. He said that she could take her rent back in exchange for sex. Simone pushed him away, telling him, “No, no, no,” and said that her children were waiting for her in the car. When she returned to her car, she was upset and cried in front of her children.
Simone endured both physical and verbal harassment. Her landlord made a barrage of unwelcome and lewd comments about her physical appearance, particularly about her “big and black” breasts.2S.M. Dep. 7:10, Ex. 7 to Pls.’ Notice of Mot. & Mot. for Class Certification, United States v. Sorensen, Case No. 1:10-cv-00085-JLT (E.D. Cal. filed on Oct. 10, 2010), ECF No. 22-9. In efforts to document the harassment, Simone recorded a conversation in which her landlord admitted to offering sex in lieu of rent, forcibly touching her, and entering her apartment without notice because he “like[d] [her]” and her “black t*****s.” Despite Simone rejecting his advances, her landlord continued the harassment.
Although her landlord’s behavior upset Simone, she was hesitant to report him. In her eventual legal deposition, she questioned her delay in reporting the harassment, saying, “Why didn’t I just turn him in or leave? Why didn’t I do something? Why did I let him do that? Why didn’t I protect myself? What should I have done different? . . . I didn’t want to tell anybody that it happened. It happened more than one time. It made me feel real bad and angry.”
Like many other women in her position, Simone may have considered the unequal power dynamic with her landlord and questioned the efficacy of reporting the harassment.3Griff Tester, An Intersectional Analysis of Sexual Harassment in Housing, 22 Gender & Soc’y 349–66 (2008), https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Griff-Tester/publication/322508647_An_Intersectional_Analysis_of_Sexual_Harassment_in_Housing/links/5a5e5a350f7e9b4f783ba982/An-Intersectional-Analysis-of-Sexual-Harassment-in-Housing.pdf; Rigel C. Oliveri, Sexual Harassment of Low-Income Women in Housing: Pilot Study Results, 83 Mo. L. Rev. 597–640 (2018), https://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/mlr/vol83/iss3/6/; Sarah Pricer, When Home is a Living Hell: Vulnerable Women and Sexual Harassment in Housing, 6 Tex. A&M J. Prop. L. 551–82 (2020), https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/journal-of-property-law/vol6/iss4/5/; Deborah Zalesne, The Intersection of Socio-Economic Class and Gender in Hostile Housing Environment Claims Under Title VIII: Who is the Reasonable Person?, 38 B.C. L. Rev. 861–902 (1997), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=918060. She may have also feared losing her housing due to landlord retaliation.4Tester, supra note 3; Oliveri, supra note 3; Pricer, supra note 3; Zalesne, supra note 3.
Following multiple rejected advances, Simone’s landlord alleged that she broke the rules of the lease by having her sister stay with her. Simone denied the allegations, but he still threatened to evict her unless she agreed to his sexual demands. Simone’s cousin helped her and her children find a new apartment, but not soon enough to avoid the eviction papers served by her landlord. With an eviction on her record, Simone has since faced difficulties securing new housing.
Simone’s experience of sexual harassment from her landlord is unfortunately not an isolated incident among low-income women renters in the United States, nor is it an issue of decades past. Housing sexual harassment is an insidious problem that has largely been overlooked by scholars and policymakers, likely because it is severely underreported5Regina Cahan, Home is No Haven: An Analysis of Sexual Harassment in Housing, 1987 Wis. L. Rev. 1061–97 (1987), https://repository.law.wisc.edu/s/uwlaw/item/27248. and often targets low-income Black women renters—a racially, socially, and economically marginalized group.6Id.; Rigel C. Oliveri, Sexual Harassment of Low-Income Women by Landlords, 21 Cityscape: J. Pol’y Dev. & Rsch. 261 (2019), http://www.huduser.gov/portal/periodicals/cityscpe/vol21num3/Cityscape-Nov_2019.pdf#page=267; Tester, supra note 3.
The Thurgood Marshall Institute envisions a future in which no one is forced to make the impossible choice between enduring sexual harassment and losing their home. This Brief seeks to shine a light on the often-ignored problem of housing sexual harassment, with a focus on the unique vulnerabilities of low-income Black women renters.iiThis Brief’s use of “woman” or “women” refers to available statistical data and is not meant to exclude or minimize the experiences of transgender and nonbinary people, who may also be at high risk of housing sexual harassment. The Brief begins by summarizing the existing literature on housing sexual harassment and discussing the gaps in the research concerning who is most at risk. It then argues that historical and present-day structural factors, including racial and gender discrimination in housing, the privatization of public housing, and the affordable housing crisis, have contributed to a housing environment in which low-income Black women renters are particularly vulnerable to sexual harassment. Finally, the Brief concludes with state and local policy recommendations to address these underlying structural factors and combat housing sexual harassment.
In 2017, the #MeToo movement brought widespread public, political, and legal attention to the issue of workplace sexual harassment.7me too., https://metoomvmt.org/ (last visited Mar. 18, 2026); Holly Corbett, The #MeToo Movement Six Years Later: What’s Changed and What’s Next, Forbes (Nov. 16, 2023, 1:39 PM), https://www.forbes.com/sites/hollycorbett/2023/11/16/the-metoo-movement-six-years-later-whats-changed-and-whats-next/. While workplace sexual harassment became the focus of reform efforts, a more insidious form of harassment continued to exist in relative obscurity: housing sexual harassment. Housing sexual harassment can take various forms, whether through quid pro quo demands for sexual favors in exchange for housing or through a hostile environment created by lewd comments, unwanted touching, or unannounced visits from landlords.8Discriminatory Conduct Under the Fair Housing Act, 81 Fed. Reg. 63,054 (Sept. 14, 2016) (codified at 100 C.F.R. pt. 100), https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/09/14/2016-21868/quid-pro-quo-and-hostile-environment-harassment-and-liability-for-discriminatory-housing-practices; Maggie E. Reed et al., There’s No Place Like Home: Sexual Harassment of Low Income Women in Housing, 11 Psych., Pub. Pol’y, & L. 439–62 (2005), https://doi.org/10.1037/1076-8971.11.3.439. A home is meant to be a place of security, safety, and comfort, yet landlords who sexually harass tenants have the power to turn homes into dangerous spaces because they can access tenants’ homes at any hour of the day or evict tenants who reject their sexual advances.9Tester, supra note 3. Even though housing sexual harassment is distinct from workplace harassment and occurs in a more private, intimate sphere, workplace harassment has dominated public and policy attention and defined housing sexual harassment law.10Brittany Urness, FHA Sexual Harassment Claims: Title VII Applications and Departures through Caselaw and HUD’s 2016 Rule, 35 BYU J. Pub. L. 80–127 (2020), https://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1592&context=jpl; Oliveri, supra note 3; Reed et al., supra note 8; Rigel C. Oliveri, Housing Sexual Harassment: A Department of Justice Case Study, 33 J. Affordable Hous. & Cmty. Dev. L. 161–98 (A.B.A. 2025), https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publications/journal_of_affordable_housing/ahv33n2-3.pdf; Pricer, supra note 3.
Until the 1985 landmark case Shellhammer v. Lewallen, there was no legal precedent recognizing housing sexual harassment as a violation of fair housing law.11Oliveri, supra note 3. In the absence of housing-specific guidance, the Shellhammer court drew from employment sexual harassment cases, a practice that continues today.12Urness, supra note 10; Oliveri, supra note 3.
In 2016, more than thirty years after Shellhammer, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) finalized its definition of housing sexual harassment under the Fair Housing Act.13Discriminatory Conduct Under the Fair Housing Act, 81 Fed. Reg. 63,054, supra note 8. Although the HUD rule largely codified court precedent, it marked an important step in giving housing sexual harassment its own formal legal framework. The rule acknowledged key distinctions from the employment context, particularly the heightened intrusiveness and threat level of harassment in the private sphere of the home compared to the more public workplace.14Urness, supra note 10; Oliveri, supra note 3.
In 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) drew further attention to housing sexual harassment by establishing the Sexual Harassment in Housing Initiative within its Civil Rights Division.15U.S. Dep’t of Just., C.R. Div., Sexual Harassment in Housing Initiative (Aug. 10, 2023), https://www.justice.gov/crt/sexual-harassment-housing-initiative (last visited Mar. 18, 2026). The initiative has raised public awareness about the issue and litigated forty-eight housing sexual harassment cases since its inception, obtaining monetary relief for over 100 survivorsiiiThis Brief uses the term “survivors” to describe individuals who have experienced housing sexual harassment. in fiscal year 2024.16Id.; U.S. Dep’t of Just., C.R. Div., Housing and Civil Enforcement Cases, https://www.justice.gov/crt/housing-and-civil-enforcement-cases?search_api_fulltext=sexual%20harassment&sort_by=field_date&page=2 (last visited Mar. 18, 2026); Michael Akinwumi et al., 2025 Fair Housing Trends Report 19, Nat’l Fair Hous. All. (2025), https://nationalfairhousing.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/2025-NFHA-Fair-Housing-Trends-Report.pdf. While the DOJ has continued to litigate housing sexual harassment cases under the current Trump administration, the initiative may become less effective because seventy-five percent of the DOJ Civil Rights Division resigned in 2025 and the division’s mission reportedly changed by “dropping any mention of the Fair Housing Act.”17Hannah Abelow et al., The Destruction of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division: Why It Matters, Just. Connection (Dec. 9, 2025), https://www.thejusticeconnection.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Civil-Rights-Division-Sign-On-Letter.pdf?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email; Rebecca Beitsch, Former DOJ staff rip civil rights unit’s ‘destruction’, The Hill (Dec. 9, 2025, 10:05 AM), https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5640287-attorneys-bash-trump-civil-rights-division-moves/.
There is a dearth of robust empirical research on housing sexual harassment, likely due to a combination of pervasive underreporting, the vulnerable position of survivors, and a lack of demographic data collection for these types of complaints.18Oliveri, supra note 3; Reed et al., supra note 8; Pricer, supra note 3. Despite these limitations, scholars have begun to build a foundation of research to improve the understanding of the nature of housing sexual harassment.19Tester, supra note 3; Cahan, supra note 5; Oliveri, supra note 3. The following section reviews the existing evidence base and highlights gaps in empirical research regarding who is most at risk of housing sexual harassment.
Existing research has consistently documented that the most commonly reported forms of housing sexual harassment are sexual coercion (such as attempts to condition housing on sex through a quid pro quo arrangement) and unwanted sexual attention.20Tester, supra note 3; Cahan, supra note 5; Oliveri, supra note 3. In one of the few national studies on housing sexual harassment, published in 1987, Regina Cahan surveyed eighty-seven public and private fair housing organizations and found that more than two-thirds of the 288 sexual harassment complaints they received involved landlord requests for sexual activity, almost thirty-nine percent involved abusive remarks, and thirty-four percent involved unwanted touching.21Cahan, supra note 5.
More recent studies show similar patterns of sexual coercion. For example, in a 2018 study, Rigel C. Oliveri conducted interviews with 100 low-income women in Columbia, Missouri, and found that almost all of the tenants who experienced sexual harassment were asked for sexual favors in lieu of rent.22Oliveri, supra note 6. In a 2025 study, Oliveri analyzed seventy-six DOJ cases of housing sexual harassment from 1993 to 2023 and again found that attempts to exchange sex for rent, along with other aspects of the rental relationship like repairs, were the most common form of harassment, appearing in ninety-three percent of the cases.23Oliveri, supra note 10. In nineteen cases, the perpetrator allegedly engaged in sexual activity with the survivor under highly coercive circumstances, which in some cases likely constituted sexual assault.24Id., at 173. In sixty-six percent of the cases, survivors were evicted, threatened with eviction, or denied a rental opportunity for refusing their landlords’ “sex-for-rent” offers.25Id. Other harassing behavior included unwanted physical contact, unauthorized entry into tenants’ homes, indecent exposure, sexual text messages, and spying on tenants in their units.26Id.; Oliveri, supra note 3.
Research shows that the perpetrators of housing sexual harassment are likely to be owner-operators of private rental housing with little oversight or monitoring of their actions.27Oliveri, supra note 10, at 168, 171. In both Oliveri’s 2018 and 2025 studies, an overwhelming majority of the housing sexual harassment perpetrators were private landlords serving as the owner-operators of the housing.28Id. at 175–76; Oliveri, supra note 3. In Oliveri’s 2025 study, at least twelve percent of private landlords were known to be participating in the Housing Choice Voucher program.29Oliveri, supra note 10, at 175–76. Only three out of seventy-six cases in Oliveri’s 2025 study involved alleged misconduct by public housing authority employees.30Id. at 176.
While research has documented what housing sexual harassment looks like, there is little data on how often it occurs. Due to vast underreporting, complaint numbers do not reveal the true prevalence of housing sexual harassment. For instance, Cahan’s 1987 study documented 288 complaints of housing sexual harassment between 1981 and 1986.31Cahan, supra note 5, at 1066. However, applying the then-estimated four percent reporting rate for employment sexual harassment, Cahan projected that between 6,800 and 15,000 incidents likely occurred nationally during that five-year period.32Id. at 1069.
More recent research by the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) found that government agencies and private, nonprofit fair housing organizations received 162 complaints of housing sexual harassment in 2024.33Akinwumi et al., supra note 16, at 12. NFHA noted that due to chronic underreporting and misreporting, the actual rate of housing sexual harassment is even higher than what complaint data suggest.34Id. If the four percent reporting rate used in Cahan’s calculation is applied to these numbers, there may have been more than 4,000 instances of housing sexual harassment in 2024.
Studies that collect data directly from tenants can offer a more comprehensive view of prevalence by capturing individuals who did not report housing sexual harassment through formal channels. For example, Oliveri’s 2018 study found that of the 100 low-income renters interviewed, sixteen had experienced some form of sexual harassment by a landlord and ten had experienced harassment that was severe enough to be legally actionable, but only one reported the harassment.35Oliveri, supra note 3, at 615–20. While such studies better account for underreporting, they are challenging to conduct because survivors, often in vulnerable economic positions, may be difficult to reach.
Scholars posit that low-income women renters of color, particularly Black women, are the most common targets of housing sexual harassment due to their vulnerable racial, gender, and economic positions.36Oliveri, supra note 10; Oliveri, supra note 3; Pricer, supra note 3; Jill Maxwell, Sexual Harassment at Home: Altering the Terms, Conditions and Privileges of Rental Housing for Section 8 Recipients, 21 Wis. Women’s L. J. 223–61 (2006), https://wjlgs.law.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/1276/2015/06/maxwell.pdf; Tester, supra note 3; Reed et al., supra note 8. Indeed, in most housing sexual harassment studies and legal cases, survivors are in precarious economic positions.37Oliveri, supra note 10; Oliveri, supra note 3; Pricer, supra note 3; Maxwell, supra note 36; Tester, supra note 3; Reed et al., supra note 8. In Cahan’s 1987 study, survivors were overwhelmingly poor, with seventy-five percent earning less than $10,000 per year (about $29,000 in 2025 dollars) and twenty-three percent earning between $10,000 and $20,000 per year (about $58,000 in 2025 dollars).38Cahan, supra note 5. In a 2008 study, Griff Tester, PhD, analyzed sixty complaints of housing sexual harassment made to the Ohio Civil Rights Commission from 1990 to 2003 and found that all the survivors were in tenuous financial situations.39Tester, supra note 3.
While scholars also argue that Black women renters are common targets of harassment, there is a lack of comprehensive racial demographic data to verify this theory. This is both due to underreporting and because sexual harassment complaint data do not systematically include the race of the survivor. In Oliveri’s 2018 study, eighty-four percent of the 100 low-income women in the sample were Black or identified as multi-racial, and ninety percent of the women who reported legally actionable sexual harassment were Black. Although the sample is too small to draw broad conclusions, this suggests that Black women were slightly overrepresented among those who experienced sexual harassment.40Oliveri, supra note 3, at 617–18; Tester, supra note 3. Similarly, fifty-eight percent of survivors in Tester’s 2008 study were Black women, and another ten percent were other women of color.41Tester, supra note 3, at 355. More research is needed to measure racial disparities, but the limited available evidence suggests that low-income Black women renters are uniquely vulnerable to housing sexual harassment.
Even so, there has been limited discussion of why low-income Black women may be particularly vulnerable to housing sexual harassment and of the underlying structural factors that may contribute to their vulnerability. The remainder of this Brief interrogates these issues, highlighting historical and present-day structural factors. By focusing on the underlying structural factors, policymakers can move beyond reactive enforcement measures and identify proactive solutions to address the unequal power dynamics that may increase low-income Black women renters’ vulnerability to housing sexual harassment.
The following section argues that historical and present-day structural factors have contributed to a housing environment in which low-income Black women renters face a high risk of housing sexual harassment. These factors include racial and gender discrimination in housing, the privatization of public housing, and the affordable housing crisis.
This section presents quotes and excerpts from case documents of housing sexual harassment lawsuits filed by the DOJ in federal district courts as illustrative examples. The DOJ files “pattern or practice” suits where there is reason to believe that a landlord has engaged in a regular practice of harassment, and thus, DOJ suits are often on behalf of multiple survivors rather than an individual.42U.S. Dep’t of Just., C.R. Div., A Pattern Or Practice Of Discrimination (Jan. 13, 2022), https://www.justice.gov/crt/pattern-or-practice-discrimination (last visited Mar. 19, 2026). The cases in this section highlight the stories of these survivors.
Discrimination has long restricted Black women’s access to housing. Consequently, a large population of low-income Black women renters are especially vulnerable to predatory landlords who are likely to engage in housing sexual harassment. Throughout history, federal, state, and local governments have deployed policies to deny housing opportunities to Black people and to reinforce racial segregation.43Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law (Perfection Learning Corp., 2019), https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Color_of_Law.html?id=ZX83zgEACAAJ&source=kp_book_description. These policies ultimately created a large Black low-income renter population that was forced to reside in neglected and disinvested neighborhoods with concentrated poverty.44M. Ruth Little, The Other Side of the Tracks: The Middle-Class Neighborhoods That Jim Crow Built in Early-Twentieth-Century North Carolina, 7 Exploring Everyday Landscapes 268–80 (1997), https://jstor.org/stable/3514397; Clark Merrefield, Soaring rents and plunging home values: How 1930s housing practices eroded black wealth, Journalist’s Res. (May 9, 2019), https://journalistsresource.org/economics/racist-lending-before-redlining/; Charles S. Bullock, III et al., Jim Crow North and Fair Housing Enforcement, 15 Colum. J. Race & L. 1193–1250 (2025), https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/cjrl/article/view/14164; Amber R. Crowell, Renting under racial capitalism: residential segregation and rent exploitation in the United States, 42 Socio. Spectrum 95–118 (2022), https://drive.google.com/file/d/15aOEkc6I2TFdSgUmg_u8dCJmMVO-6Fgs/view. Black women have faced additional barriers because of intersections between racial and gender discrimination in the housing market.45Wilhelmina A. Leigh, Barriers to fair housing for black women, 21 Sex Roles 69–84 (1989), https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00289728.
Shortly after the abolition of slavery in 1865, many states enacted Black Codes. Among other racist impacts, these discriminatory laws restricted the residential mobility and housing options available to Black people.46U.S. Dep’t of the Interior, Nat’l Park Serv., Civil Rights in America: Racial Discrimination in Housing – A National Historic Landmarks Theme Study (Mar. 2021), https://planning.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/op/publication/attachments/Civil_Rights_Housing_NHL_Theme_Study_final.pdf; BlackPast, (1866) Mississippi Black Codes, https://blackpast.org/african-american-history/1866-mississippi-black-codes/ (last visited Mar. 25, 2026); History Editors, Black Codes (Dec. 4, 2025), https://www.history.com/articles/black-codes; Nadra Kareem Nittle, How the Black Codes Limited African American Progress After the Civil War, History (Sept. 2, 2025), https://www.history.com/articles/black-codes-reconstruction-slavery. Political backlash to Black Codes led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which included protections such as granting Black people the legal right to own and rent housing, as well as the ratification of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.47Elaine Gross, Denial of Housing to African Americans: Post-Slavery Reflections from a Civil Rights Advocate, 38 Touro L. Rev. 589–638 (2022), https://digitalcommons.tourolaw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3395&context=lawreview; 1866 Civil Rights Act, 14 Stat. 27 (Apr. 9, 1866), http://www.supremelaw.org/ref/1866cra/1866.cra.htm; U.S. Dep’t of the Interior, supra note 46.
Despite these protections, a new state-sanctioned form of discrimination emerged: Jim Crow laws. During the Jim Crow era of the late nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century, discriminatory policies enacted on the local, state, and federal levels denied Black people equal access to renting or owning a home in areas of their choice. Government policies, such as racial zoning, exclusionary land-use zoning, and redlining, coupled with private action, such as racially restrictive covenants, racial steering, and white intimidation, imposed formidable barriers to homeownership and wealth accumulation for Black people.48U.S. Dep’t of the Interior, supra note 46; Gross, supra note 47; Hous. Affordability Inst., History of Exclusion in America’s Housing Policies (May 2024), https://www.housingaffordabilityinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Ex_Zoning_History_Print.pdf; Michael C. Lens, Zoning, Land Use, and the Reproduction of Urban Inequality, 48 Ann. Rev. Socio. 421–39 (2022), https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10691857/; Matthew Hall et al., Racial Steering in U.S. Housing Markets: When, Where, and to Whom Does It Occur?, 9 Socius (Jan. 2023), https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23780231231197024; Neil C. Bruce, Real Estate Steering and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, 12 Tulsa L. Rev. 758–73 (1977), https://digitalcommons.law.utulsa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1395&context=tlr; La-Brina Almeida, A History of Racist Federal Housing Policies, Mass. Budget & Pol’y Ctr. (Aug. 6, 2021), https://massbudget.org/2021/08/06/a-history-of-racist-federal-housing-policies/; Jonathan Rose, Revisiting How Two Federal Housing Agencies Propagated Redlining in the 1930s (Fed. Rsrv. Bank of Chi., Policy Brief, Apr. 2022), https://www.chicagofed.org/research/content-areas/mobility/policy-brief-federal-housing-programs-redlining; Fed. Rsrv. Hist., Redlining (June 2, 2023), https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/redlining.
In addition to racial barriers to housing access, Black women face gender-based discrimination that has further excluded them from housing opportunities in the private market.49Leigh, supra note 45. In 1947, civil rights trailblazer Rev. Pauli Murray coined the term “Jane Crow” to convey the intersections of racial- and gender-based discrimination across various spheres of life, including education, employment, and housing, arguing that “Jim Crow” did not sufficiently encompass the unique oppression experienced by Black women.50Nat’l Museum of Afr.-Am. Hist. & Culture, Jane Crow & the Story of Pauli Murray, https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/jane-crow-story-pauli-murray (last visited Mar. 19, 2026); Ayesha K. Hardison, Big Idea: Coupling Jim and Jane Crow, Humans. Kan. (Jan. 11, 2021), https://www.humanitieskansas.org/get-involved/kansas-stories/the-big-idea/big-idea-coupling-jim-and-jane-crow; Pauli Murray et al., Jane Crow and the Law: Sex Discrimination and Title VII, 34 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 232–56 (1965), https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/gwlr34&id=246.
In 1968, Congress passed the Fair Housing Act, which banned housing discrimination on the basis of race and other protected characteristics. Six years later, Congress added sex as a protected characteristic under the Fair Housing Act.51Noah Kazis, Fair Housing for a Non-Sexist City, 134 Harv. L. Rev. 1683–1758 (2021), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm?abstractid=3552190. Because explicitly sexist housing policies were legal prior to 1974, housing providers and mortgage lenders could legally discriminate against women.52Talia Grossman, The Horrifying History of Sexist Housing Policies You Might Not Know About, Nat’l Women’s L. Ctr. Blog (Aug. 22, 2023), https://nwlc.org/the-horrifying-history-of-sexist-housing-policies-you-might-not-know-about/. For example, landlords could legally charge women higher rents than men.53Id. Likewise, mortgage lenders often required women to have higher incomes than men, refused to count their sources of income not from employment, required married women to have their husband’s approval, and asked invasive questions about the use of birth control.54Sammi Aibinder et al., The Roots of Discriminatory Housing Policy: Moving Toward Gender Justice in Our Economy, Nat’l Women’s L. Ctr. (Aug. 2022), https://nwlc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Housing-Paper-Accessible-FINAL-1.pdf; Grossman, supra note 52.
Even after the Fair Housing Act began prohibiting race- and sex-based discrimination in housing, Black women continued to face barriers to housing through market exclusion, racial covenants, redlining, and sex stereotypes.55Stacia West et al., Reversing the Gains of the Civil Rights and Women’s Movements: How Housing Strain and Market Exclusion Led to Wealth Depletion During the Great Recession, 12 J. Soc’y Soc. Work & Rsch. 263–436 (2021), https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10.1086/714544; Kazis, supra note 51. For example, Black women in the 1970s often reported discrimination in the process of buying homes, with realtors refusing to take Black women clients or steering them to certain neighborhoods based on the belief that the presence of a Black woman homebuyer would reduce neighborhood property values.56Leigh, supra note 45.
Additionally, fair housing testing researchivFair housing testing is a practice that was introduced by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights advocates during the Civil Rights Movement to uncover discrimination in housing. It involves testers posing as prospective tenants to observe whether they receive differential responses based on race or another protected characteristic. has documented persistent landlord bias in the willingness to rent to Black tenants, and Black women tenants in particular.57Claudia L. Aranda, Housing Discrimination in America: Lessons From the Last Decade of Paired-Testing Research, Urb. Inst. (Feb. 27, 2019), https://www.congress.gov/116/meeting/house/108964/witnesses/HHRG-116-AP20-Wstate-ArandaC-20190227.pdf; Melvin J. Kelley IV, Testing One, Two, Three: Detecting and Proving Intersectional Discrimination in Housing Transactions, 42 Harv. J. L. & Gender 301–69 (2019), https://journals.law.harvard.edu/jlg/wp-content/uploads/sites/88/2020/05/Testing-One-Two-Three.pdf. In one fair housing test in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, metro area in the late 1990s, researchers found that being Black and female significantly reduced the likelihood of accessing a rental agent.58Kelley, supra note 57. Specifically, Black women prospective tenants had to make twice as many calls as white men to reach an agent and, upon contact, were quoted rental application fees that were nearly four times as high as those quoted to white men on average.59Id. at 336.
During the Great Recession (2007 to 2009), Black women were targeted for subprime lending and fringe financial products, even when they qualified for safer products.60West et al., supra note 55. Black women were 256% more likely to hold a subprime mortgage in the lead-up to the financial crisis than a similarly situated white male borrower.61Id. Throughout modern history, Black women have been pushed out of homeownership opportunities, targeted by wealth-depleting predatory behavior, and excluded from quality rental opportunities.62Id.
Compounding these housing challenges, Black women also face structural inequalities in access to marriage,63Averil Y. Clarke, Inequalities of Love: College-Educated Black Women and the Barriers to Romance and Family (Duke Univ. Press 2011), https://www.dukeupress.edu/inequalities-of-love. due in part to disproportionately high rates of incarceration and premature death among Black men that result from systemic inequality.64Terry-Ann Craigie et al., Racial Differences in the Effect of Marriageable Males on Female Family Headship, 84 J. Demographic Econ. 231–56 (2018), https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6136656/; Elise Gould et al., Black workers face two of the most lethal preexisting conditions for coronavirus—racism and economic inequality, Econ. Pol’y Inst. (June 1, 2020), https://www.epi.org/publication/black-workers-covid/. Black women are more than three times as likely as white women to be single heads of households,65Black Women Are the Most Likely Group to Be Single-Parents,J. Blacks Higher Educ. (June 10, 2024), https://jbhe.com/2024/06/census-bureau-report-finds-black-women-own-the-greatest-share-of-single-parent-family-homes/. which can create additional hurdles in securing safe, affordable housing. First, unmarried Black women must rely on a single income to pay for housing, and Black women disproportionately suffer from wage discrimination: Black women make 66.5 cents for every dollar white men make.66Inica Kotasthane et al., Different Day, Still No Equal Pay: Black Women Deserve Better, Inst. Women’s Pol’y & Rsch. (July 8, 2024), https://iwpr.org/different-day-still-no-equal-pay-black-women-deserve-better/. Second, single Black women may be more vulnerable to harassment and discrimination because they must navigate the rental market alone, while contending with longstanding racial and gender stereotypes. For example, there has long been a racist and sexist narrative of single Black women as lazy “welfare queens” who do not work and are a drain on public resources.67H. Shellae Versey, Black Women, Public Housing, and Resistance, Black Persps. (Nov. 8, 2024), https://www.aaihs.org/black-women-public-housing-and-resistance/. Because of this stereotype, landlords may view single Black women as less-desirable tenants and be less likely to rent to them, restricting their available housing options and reducing their power in the housing market.68Leigh, supra note 45. At the same time, Black women have been hypersexualized and characterized as promiscuous, such as through the racialized trope of the “Jezebel.”69Thekia Cheeseborough et al., Interpersonal Sexual Objectification, Jezebel Stereotype Endorsement, and Justification of Intimate Partner Violence Toward Women, Psych. Women Q. 1–14 (2020), https://www.academia.edu/102288723/Interpersonal_Sexual_Objectification_Jezebel_Stereotype_Endorsement_and_Justification_of_Intimate_Partner_Violence_Toward_Women. These prejudices and stereotypes, rooted in Jane Crow structural oppression, increase Black women’s vulnerability to sexual harassment by landlords in the private housing market.70Kate Sablosky Elengold, Structural Subjugation: Theorizing Racialized Sexual Harassment in Housing, 27 Yale J. L. & Feminism 227–86 (2016), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2740849.
Multiple cases of housing sexual harassment filed by the DOJ contain evidence of racist undertones that are clearly rooted in such stereotypes. For example, in the 2009 case United States v. Hurt, a Black survivor’s landlord told her that “he heard the Black girls got some—some good p***y.”71United States’ Resp. to Defs.’ Statement of Facts Not in Dispute, United States’ Statement of Material Facts Not In Dispute, and Statement of Material Facts in Dispute 26, United States v. Hurt, Case No. 3:09-cv-00031-BSM (E.D. Ark. filed July 9, 2010), ECF No. 50. In the same case, a property manager testified that the landlord told him that if tenants failed to pay rent, he could “[t]ake the little girl back there to [the] back and trade it out with her . . . you know, trade it out, trade that rent out with them ole girls . . . them ole girls know what they doing, them black girls do can show you a thing or two for the rent.”72Id. at 27, ¶¶ 206–07. In the 2008 case United States v. Gumbaytay, the landlord told a Black survivor that “he liked Black sisters with ‘big butts’ and liked to have sex with them from the back.”73Pl. United States’ Mem. of L. in Opp’n to Def. Gumbaytay’s Mot. to Dismiss for Lack of Evidence, Scroggins Decl. ¶ 11, United States v. Gumbaytay, Civ. A. No. 2:08-cv-00573-MEF-SRW (M.D. Ala. filed Oct. 28, 2009), ECF No. 102-7.
While state-sanctioned discriminatory housing policies are no longer officially in place, Black women continue to feel the impacts of these policies on housing access today. A majority of single Black women are renters, with only thirty-seven percent being homeowners compared with sixty-two percent of single white women and fifty-seven percent of single white men.74Sarah Javaid et al., Homeownership—A Pathway to Wealth Building—Is Still Out Of Reach For Many Women of Color 5, Nat’l Women’s L. Ctr. (Nov. 2023), https://nwlc.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/2023_NWLC_Homeowner_Brief_Accessible.pdf. Furthermore, seventy-seven percent of single Black women renters are low-income,vLow-income is defined as making eighty percent or less of the area median income. compared with sixty-two percent of single white men renters.75Talia Grossman et al., The Continuing Need for Gender, Racial, and Disability Justice for Renters, Nat’l Women’s L. Ctr. (July 2025), https://nwlc.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Aug27-Renters-Brief-Accessible.pdf. This gap is even wider for single Black women renters with children.76Id. at 6. Single Black women renters are also more likely to be severely cost-burdenedviSeverely cost-burdened is defined as spending the majority of one’s income (over fifty percent) on housing and utilities. (43.5%) than single white women renters (40.4%) and single white men renters (31.9%).77Id. at 7.
This cost burden can ultimately lead tenants to fall behind on rent and face eviction, and Black women renters are at the greatest risk for both of these outcomes.78Cleo Bluthenthal, The Disproportionate Burden of Eviction on Black Women, Ctr. for Am. Progress (Aug. 14, 2023), https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-disproportionate-burden-of-eviction-on-black-women/. According to the Eviction Lab, the average eviction filing rate for Black women renters is 6.4%, compared with 5.9% for Black men renters, 3.4% for white women renters, and 3.3% for white men renters (see Figure 1).79Peter Hepburn et al., Racial and Gender Disparities among Evicted Americans, 7 Socio. Sci. 649, 654 (Dec. 2020), https://sociologicalscience.com/download/vol-7/december/SocSci_v7_649to662.pdf.
In sum, despite the formal end of racist and gendered housing laws and policies, Black women continue to face barriers to fair housing access. As a result, Black women renters have restricted options and reduced power in the housing market, which may increase their vulnerability to housing sexual harassment.
With limited housing options, low-income Black women renters may also be less likely to do anything they believe could put their access to housing at risk, such as reporting sexual harassment. The fear of losing their housing and facing limited options for new housing is a commonly cited reason why survivors of housing sexual harassment did not report the harassment sooner.80Martha R. Burt, Homeless families, singles, and others: Findings from the 1996 national survey of homeless assistance providers and clients, 12 Hous. Pol’y Debate 737–80 (2001), https://doi.org/10.1080/10511482.2001.9521428. For example, in the 2016 case United States v. Webb, despite the landlord’s attempts to touch his tenant’s breast and his suggestion that she and her girlfriend engage in sexual intercourse with him in exchange for housing, the survivor did not initially report her landlord because, “She was concerned because she did not have anywhere else to go.”81Ex. H (HUD Determination of Reasonable Cause) to United States’ Reply Br. in Supp. of its Mot. to Compel Resps. to Disc., U.S. Dep’t of Hous. & Urb. Dev. v. Webb, Case No. 4:16-cv-01400-SNLJ (E.D. Mo. filed Sept. 12, 2017), https://www.justice.gov/crt/case/united-states-v-webb-ed-mo. Similarly, the survivors in the 2018 case United States v. Hames experienced severe harassment, including assault. However, when asked why they did not move out or report it sooner, one survivor explained, “I mean, I didn’t know where else to go at that point . . . But I also didn’t want to stay there.”82Bartlett Dep. 386:15–21, Ex. 1 to Defs. Randy Hames and Hames Marina LLCs’ Mot. for Summ. J., United States v. Hames, Case No. 5:18-cv-01055-CLS (N.D. Ala. filed on Apr. 9, 2021), ECF No, 129-2. Another survivor in that case said, “I did not call the police because—like I said, he made me feel threatened [by] losing my home with my children. And I needed a place to live with my children.”83Watson Dep. 207:12–19, Ex. 57 to Private Pls.’ Evidentiary Submission in Supp. of their Opp’n to Defs.’ Mot. for Partial Summ. J., United States v. Hames, Case No. 5:18-cv-01055-CLS (N.D. Ala. filed Apr. 30, 2021), ECF No. 150-9.viiSurvivors with children may have heightened fears of losing their home because housing insecurity is associated with higher rates of child maltreatment investigations and foster care placement. (See Rong Bai et al., Exploring the Association Between Housing Insecurity and Child Welfare Involvement: A Systematic Review, 39 Child & Adolescent Soc. Work J. 247–60 (2022), https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346516944_Exploring_the_Association_Between_Housing_Insecurity_and_Child_Welfare_Involvement_A_Systematic_Review.)
Another phenomenon that has increased low-income Black women renters’ vulnerability to housing sexual harassment is the privatization of public housing, which has given landlords outsized power and authority over renters in the private market. Landlords may recognize their power as gatekeepers to housing for low-income Black women and act with a sense of impunity.
Historically, public housing provided an alternative to the private housing market for low-income Black people. However, from its inception, public housing was segregated and relegated Black residents to large, poorly constructed buildings in high-poverty neighborhoods.84NAACP Legal Def. Fund, The Bad Housing Blues: Discrimination in the Housing Choice Voucher Program in Memphis, Tennessee (n.d.), https://www.naacpldf.org/housing-discrimination-report/; Junia Howell et al., Still Separate and Unequal: Persistent Racial Segregation and Inequality in Subsidized Housing, 9 Socius (Jan. 2023), https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23780231231192389#bibr66-23780231231192389; Richard Rothstein, Commentary, Race and public housing: Revisiting the federal role, Econ. Pol’y Inst. (Dec. 17, 2012), https://www.epi.org/publication/race-public-housing-revisiting-federal-role/; Rothstein, supra note 43; Alexander von Hoffman, Problems and Progress: Public Housing in an American Social Housing System, Joint Ctr. Hous. Stud. Harv. Univ. (Oct. 2024), https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/research/files/harvard_jchs_public_housing_von_hoffman_2024.pdf; Susan J. Popkin, Lessons from 40 Years of Public Housing Policy, Urb. Inst. (June 2024), https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/2024-06/Lessons_from_40_Years_Public_Housing.pdf. Once the Fair Housing Act of 1968 mandated the desegregation of public housing, many white residents moved to avoid integration, leaving many public housing buildings with a majority of Black residents.85Howell et al., supra note 84; Rothstein, supra note 84. By the 1970s, public housing became associated with poverty and was racially identified as housing for Black people.86NAACP Legal Def. Fund, supra note 84; Howell et al., supra note 84; Rothstein, supra note 84. As the public perception of this housing became more racialized, the federal government disinvested from public housing, citing high costs, and the shift toward privatization began.87NAACP Legal Def. Fund, supra note 84; Howell et al., supra note 84; Popkin, supra note 84; Lawrence J. Vale et al., From Public Housing to Public-Private Housing, 78 J. Am. Plan. Ass’n 379–402 (2012), https://doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2012.737985.
In 1974, the Housing Choice Voucher program (formerly “Section 8”) was established under the Homes and Community Development Act to provide rental assistance to low-income households, enabling them to seek housing in the private market, including in high-opportunity neighborhoods.88NAACP Legal Def. Fund, supra note 84, at pt. 1. The aim of the program was to utilize the private housing market to address longstanding issues with public housing, including racial segregation and the concentration of public housing in high-poverty, low-resource neighborhoods.89Id.
Today, rather than living in public housing, many low-income renters find housing in the private rental market and rely on the Housing Choice Voucher program for rental assistance.90Erik Gartland et al., Where Households Using Federal Rental Assistance Live, Ctr. on Budget & Pol’y Priorities (Mar. 5, 2025), https://www.cbpp.org/research/housing/where-households-using-federal-rental-assistance-live#:~:text=Renters%20with%20a%20housing%20voucher,in%20the%20private%20rental%20market; NAACP Legal Def. Fund, supra note 84; iPropertyManagement, Public Housing Statistics (Nov. 4, 2024), https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/public-housing-statistics#:~:text=9.3%20million%20or%202.84%25%20of,in%20Section%208%20Project%20Housing (last visited Mar. 19, 2026); Ctr. on Budget & Pol’y Priorities, Policy Basics: The Housing Choice Voucher Program (Sept. 30, 2024), https://www.cbpp.org/research/housing/the-housing-choice-voucher-program. Black women renters especially rely on Housing Choice Vouchers to access housing: seventy-eight percent of voucher holders have a female head of household,91Laurie Goodman et al., Leveraging Financing to Encourage Landlords to Accept Housing Choice Vouchers 1, Urb. Inst. (Sept. 2022), https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/2022-09/Leveraging%20Financing%20to%20Encourage%20Landlords%20to%20Accept%20Housing%20Choice%20Vouchers.pdf. and forty-eight percent of voucher holders are Black.92U.S. Dep’t Hous. & Urb. Dev., Off. of Pol’y Dev. & Rsch., Assisted Housing: National and Local Dataset (Feb. 17, 2026), https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/assthsg.html (choose “2009-2025” from headers; then choose “Housing Choice Vouchers” under “Select a Program”; then choose “%Black Non-Hispanic” under “Select a Sub-Program Type”; then click “Get Results”) (last visited Mar. 19, 2026).
However, federal law does not require landlords to accept vouchers as payment.93Bluthenthal, supra note 78. Therefore, in states without laws banning discrimination based on source of income, the utility of a voucher depends on whether a landlord is willing to accept it.94J. Rosie Tighe, Source of Income Discrimination and Fair Housing Policy, 32 J. Plan. Literature 3–15 (2017), https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0885412216670603. As a result, having a voucher does not ensure access to housing for a low-income renter in the same way that acceptance to public housing once did. Additionally, due to the limited supply of vouchers, only one out of every four eligible renter households receives a voucher. This means that many low-income renters must seek housing in the private market without rental assistance.95Joint Ctr. Hous. Stud. of Harv. Univ., The State of the Nation’s Housing 2025 (2025), https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/reports/files/Harvard_JCHS_The_State_of_the_Nations_Housing_2025.pdf.
While the Housing Choice Voucher program has expanded opportunities for low-income households to move to low-poverty, high-resource neighborhoods, with increased reliance on the private rental market for housing, private landlords have become the gatekeepers to affordable housing for low-income renters.96Eva Rosen et al., Landlord Paternalism: Housing the Poor with a Velvet Glove, 69 Soc. Problems 470–91 (2022), https://academic.oup.com/socpro/article-abstract/69/2/470/5936100#no-access-message. This is especially true for Black women renters, who are more likely to have low incomes than other renters.97Bluthenthal, supra note 78; Grossman et al., supra note 75. Housing sexual harassment cases reveal that survivors are aware of the outsized power that landlords can wield against them and their relative powerlessness as renters. In the 2018 case United States v. Hames, a survivor expressed her hesitancy about speaking out against her landlord, saying, “When you’re making accusations against someone who holds power in the community, yes. You don’t feel like you’ll be heard.”98Carreker Dep. 123:22–124:2, Ex. 2 to Defs. Randy Hames and Hames Marina LLCs’ Mot. for Summ. J., United States v. Hames, Case No. 5:18-cv-01055-CLS (N.D. Ala. filed on Apr. 9, 2021), ECF No, 129-3. Another survivor in the same case echoed a similar sentiment, explaining how her landlord’s ability to enter her home without permission made her feel “like a nobody” and not “important enough to be listened to at all.”99Bartlett Dep., supra note 82, at 500:7–15. In the 2022 case HUD v. Morgan, the landlord taunted the survivor by encouraging her to try to report him while reminding her, “You better recognize who you’re talking to real quick,” and “You could not afford a bed when you came here, you cannot afford a lawyer.”100Charge of Discrimination, U.S. Dep’t of Hous. & Urb. Dev. v. Morgan, Jr., FHEO No. 08-21-2376-8 (U.S. Dep’t of Hous. & Urb. Dev., Off. of Admin. L. Js. filed on Dec. 7, 2022), https://archives.hud.gov/news/2022/Morgan-Charge-Final-12-7-22.pdf. As these cases show, some landlords recognize their power as gatekeepers to housing for low-income women renters and act with a sense of impunity.
Finally, the risk of discrimination and harassment that low-income Black women renters face is made worse by the affordable housing crisis. The lack of affordable housing is a nationwide crisis that disproportionately affects low-income Black households.101Dan Emmanuel et al., The Gap: A Shortage of Affordable Homes, Nat’l Low Income Hous. Coal. (Mar. 2026), https://nlihc.org/gap?utm_source=NLIHC+All+Subscribers&utm_campaign=9b96f4c7b4-report_042122&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e090383b5e-9b96f4c7b4-293444466&ct=t(report_042122); Joint Ctr. Hous. Stud. of Harv. Univ., supra note 95; Joint Ctr. Hous. Stud. of Harv. Univ., America’s Rental Housing 2024 (2024), https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/americas-rental-housing-2024. No state has an adequate supply of affordable rental housing for extremely low-incomeviiiExtremely low-income is defined as having an income that is at or below either the federal poverty guideline or thirty percent of area median income, whichever is greater. renters.102Emmanuel et al., supra note 101. Nationally, there are only thirty-five affordable and available rental homes for every 100 extremely low-income renter households.103Id. Many low-income renters are cost-burdenedixCost-burdened is defined as spending thirty percent or more of income on housing and utilities. due to expensive rents that have outpaced incomes.104Joint Ctr. Hous. Stud. of Harv. Univ., supra note 95. In 2023, for the third consecutive year, the number of cost-burdened renter households set a new high at 22.6 million, an increase of 2.2 million since 2019.105Id. at 6, 31. Fifty-seven percent of Black renter households are cost-burdened, which is the highest rate of any racial or ethnic group (see Figure 2).106Id. at 32.
As a result of the affordable housing crisis, many low-income households—especially those headed by Black women—find themselves homeless or facing eviction. A record-high 771,480 people in the United States experienced homelessness on a single night in January 2024, up eighteen percent in one year.107Id. at 7. Black people are overrepresented among both people experiencing homelessness and those facing eviction,108U.S. Dep’t Hous. & Urb. Dev., Off. of Pol’y Dev. & Rsch., Annual Homelessness Assessment Report (Dec. 2024), https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/ahar/2024-ahar-part-1-pit-estimates-of-homelessness-in-the-us.html; Bluthenthal, supra note 78. and Black women renters face the highest risk of eviction.109Hepburn et al., supra note 79. Given the heightened likelihood of homelessness and eviction due to the affordable housing crisis, low-income renters who are successful in finding affordable housing are desperate to keep it.110Pricer, supra note 3; Alyssa George, The Blind Spots of Law and Culture: How the Workplace Paradigm of Sexual Harassment Marginalizes Sexual Harassment in the Home, 17 Geo. J. Gender & L. 645 (2016), https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/grggenl17&id=654. This context of limited housing availability and greater desperation to retain housing likely exacerbates the risk of housing sexual harassment for low-income Black women.
Cases of housing sexual harassment filed by the DOJ reveal that the looming threat of homelessness impacts renters’ willingness to endure sexual harassment. Two survivors in the 2019 case United States v. Nelson had experienced homelessness and were fearful of returning. One survivor shared, “I was homeless and I wanted to hurry up and get into a place. And actually stay in a place. I didn’t want to have to go through the homeless situation again with my two kids. So I just sucked it up and dealt with it.”111Expert Report of Linda L. Collinsworth 11, Ex. 5 to Mot. in Limine to Exclude or Limit Expert Test. of Thomas Plunkett, Debra Borys, and Robert Taylor, United States v. Nelson, Case No. 3:19-cv-01087-TWR-WVG (S.D. Cal. filed Dec. 18, 2020), ECF No. 49-5 at 11. The other survivor had also been homeless, “living in a garage with two young children, ages [eight] and [four] at the time.”112Id. at 15. A survivor in the 2009 case United States v. Peterson said she felt that she “couldn’t just move with nowhere to go” because she “was lucky to get this house” that she could afford.113Expert Report of Louise F. Fitzgerald, Ex. A to Reply Br. in Supp. of Pl. United States’ Mot. in Limine, United States v. Peterson, Case No. 2:09-cv-10333-JAC-DAS (E.D. Mich. filed July 21, 2010), ECF No. 66-2.
The following policy recommendations can help state and local governments address the structural factors that drive housing sexual harassment. These recommendations are informed by the existing research on housing sexual harassment and the unique vulnerabilities of low-income Black women renters. State and local policymakers must move beyond after-the-fact enforcement actions by enacting upstream solutions that address the underlying structural factors that allow housing sexual harassment to persist.
The affordable housing crisis and the powerlessness that tenants often feel as a result of their limited housing options increase the risk of housing sexual harassment. Policymakers must combat the housing crisis by increasing access to safe housing for low-income, very low-income, and extremely low-income renters.xHUD defines low-income as eighty percent of the area median income, very low-income as fifty percent of the area median income, and extremely low-income as thirty percent of the area median income (Section 3(b)(2) of the Housing Act of 1937: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-10348/pdf/COMPS-10348.pdf). State and local zoning reforms that permit the construction of more diverse types of homes would reduce housing costs and generally enjoy widespread popular support.114Tushar Kansal et al., Most People Across Races and Ethnicities Support Policies to Allow More Housing, NAACP Legal Def. Fund, T. Marshall Inst. (n.d.), https://tminstituteldf.org/most-people-across-races-and-ethnicities-back-steps-to-boost-housing-zoning-survey/ (last visited Mar. 19, 2026). Such reforms include ending single-family zoning restrictions, allowing homes to be built closer together, and eliminating parking minimums.115Id.
Public housing residents are by no means free from sexual harassment.116Oliveri, supra note 3. Still, maintaining high-quality public housing in low-poverty, well-resourced areas would expand low-income renters’ housing options, so they could consider both public and private housing. Investing in high-quality public housing also helps protect against private landlords having concentrated power as gatekeepers to housing for low-income renters. This is particularly important given research documenting that perpetrators of housing sexual harassment are most commonly the owner-operators of private rental housing with little oversight.117Rigel C. Oliveri, Legal and Policy Responses to Sexual Harassment in Housing, 57 Conn. L. Rev. 1095–1107 (2025), https://digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1640&context=law_review.
Good cause eviction laws provide tenants with a baseline right to remain in their homes if they are paying rent and abiding by the requirements of their lease. Research from the Thurgood Marshall Institute demonstrates that neighborhoods with more Black renters face disproportionate rates of no-fault evictions, in the absence of good cause protections.118Sandhya Kajeepeta, Evictions Are a Racial Justice Crisis: The Promise of Good Cause Protection in New York, NAACP Legal Def. Fund (n.d.), https://www.naacpldf.org/evictions-racial-justice-good-cause-protection-new-york/ (last visited Mar. 19, 2026); Sandhya Kajeepeta, Spatial and Racialized Disparities in Evictions: Case Studies from New York and Maryland, (Aug. 6, 2024), T. Marshall Inst. Soc. Sci. Rev. Rsch. Paper, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm?abstractid=4919121 (last visited Mar. 19, 2026). Additionally, evidence shows that Black women face the highest rates of eviction filings.119Hepburn et al., supra note 79. Good cause laws can protect Black women and other renters from retaliatory evictions related to sexual harassment.
Right-to-counsel laws ensure that tenants facing eviction have free legal representation in housing court. Between fifty-one percent and seventy-five percent of tenants without legal representation lose their eviction cases in court.120Hannah Middlebrooks, The Eviction Crisis is a Women’s Crisis–The Right to Counsel Can Help, Nat’l Women’s L. Ctr. Blog (July 28, 2021), https://nwlc.org/the-eviction-crisis-is-a-womens-crisis-the-right-to-counsel-can-help/. Black women face higher rates of eviction and thus would particularly benefit from legal representation, including to defend against retaliatory evictions stemming from sexual harassment.121Hepburn et al., supra note 79.
Source of income non-discrimination laws bar landlords from discriminating against households that rely on the Housing Choice Voucher program or other government programs to pay rent. In states and localities without these protections, landlords can refuse to accept vouchers. This leaves voucher holders, who are disproportionately low-income Black women, with limited housing options.122Aibinder et al., supra note 54. Source of income non-discrimination laws can increase the housing options available to low-income Black women renters and thereby increase their power in the housing market.
Eviction sealing laws limit the extent to which past eviction filings can remain on a tenant’s housing record.123Nat’l Ctr. for State Cts., Eviction Record Sealing Strategies (2025), https://nationalcenterforstatecourts.app.box.com/s/pe03qa0e78r6vwjo7k5r6m8l393xvi8t. Such laws may require courts to seal all eviction filings unless and until there is a final eviction judgment, or they may seal old eviction judgments after a certain period of time.124Sophie Beiers et al., Clearing the Record: How Eviction Sealing Laws Can Advance Housing Access for Women of Color, Am. C.L. Union (Jan. 10, 2020), https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/clearing-the-record-how-eviction-sealing-laws-can-advance-housing-access-for-women-of-color. Landlords often refuse to rent to prospective tenants with any prior eviction records, and they may use inaccurate and outdated records during the tenant screening process. Black women are more likely to face eviction filings, which can stand in the way of future housing opportunities. This is true even when an eviction filing was rooted in sexual harassment and the eviction case was ultimately dismissed.125Beiers et al., supra note 124; Rasheedah Phillips, Addressing Race and Gender Inequities at the Root of Housing Injustice, L. & Pol. Econ. Project (Jan. 16, 2020), https://lpeproject.org/blog/addressing-race-and-gender-inequities-at-the-root-of-housing-injustice/.
Despite the pervasive and insidious nature of housing sexual harassment, the issue has received limited public and scholarly attention. Consequently, many low-income women renters endure harassment from predatory landlords in silence. Due to structural factors, such as racial and gender discrimination in housing, the privatization of public housing, and the affordable housing crisis, low-income Black women renters are especially vulnerable to housing sexual harassment. The policy recommendations above aim to directly address these structural factors in order to safeguard low-income Black women renters’ right to safe housing. Because housing sexual harassment occurs in relative obscurity and those impacted are often from the most vulnerable and forgotten segments of society, it is critical that researchers, policymakers, and advocates continue the work of exposing the exploitation of low-income Black women renters and advancing effective solutions.
