Each year, nearly three million children face eviction in the United States. Yet, because children are often unnamed on the eviction filing, they are legally and practically invisible in the landlord-tenant courts where their eviction cases are being heard. This brief explores some key observable differences between households with and without children that were served by Newark Community Solutions’ Eviction Diversion Initiative between May 1, 2024, and December 31, 2025.
Using programmatic and administrative data on households served during this period, this research finds that households with children had higher rent debt burdens, faced swifter eviction actions, and were more likely to enter settlement agreements than those without. Taken all together, these findings are especially concerning in the context of mass legal underrepresentation of tenants during eviction proceedings.
