How close is the average family to losing their home?

In the Federal Reserve’s survey of US households, taken in October 2025, 63 percent of adults said they could cover a $400 emergency expense with cash or its equivalent. That leaves more than a third of adults who could not. Among renters, twenty-three percent said they had been behind on their rent at some point in the past year.

How did a $25 rent hike cost one family everything?

In our film Home, Humble Design founder Treger Strasberg tells how she found out her friend in Detroit was homeless over coffee one day. Her friend said she and her children had spent the night in a homeless shelter. This experience inspired Treger and her friend to find her a home she could afford.

During their meeting Treger learned that everything her friend had ever owned, including what was passed down in her family, was put to the curb. Her friend couldn’t afford a $25 rent hike at her last place. She and her children moved in with two bags of clothing. Treger says that was the moment she realized “we’re all just one paycheck away.”

How many families face eviction in the US each year?

More than 3.6 million eviction cases were filed in the United States in 2018, according to Eviction Lab at Princeton University. The lab says that is similar to the annual average of eviction filings between 2000 and 2018.

Eviction Lab researchers, including Matthew Desmond, reported in 2023 that every year 2.9 million children under age 18 are threatened with eviction and 1.5 million are evicted. Those under age 20 are at greatest risk of eviction.

The same study found that over half of all eviction filings are against Black renters, who make up 18.8 percent of renters in America. Annual eviction filing rates among Black adults living with kids surpass 25 percent.

What does Eviction Lab say an eviction takes besides the home?

Eviction Lab says families regularly lose their possessions, which are piled on the sidewalk or placed in storage and only reclaimed by paying a fee. It says eviction causes job loss, and that children often have to switch schools.

Desmond spent more than a year living alongside eight Milwaukee families going through eviction. His book Evicted argues that eviction is a cause of poverty, not only a result of it. It won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.

How many families with children were homeless in 2025?

HUD’s 2025 count found 745,652 people homeless in the United States on a single night in January 2025. Of those, 230,366 were people in families with children, and 57 percent of the people in those families were children under 18. Our Homelessness guide has more from the same count.

The number of people in homeless families with children declined by 29,107, an 11 percent reduction over the last year, HUD says.

Homelessness, Treger says, “is mostly moms and kids who have had a really bad year and are looking to start over.”

What keeps a family housed once they move in?

Treger says in her film that nationally, the share of families who go back into homelessness within 12 months hovers around 50 percent. Among the families Humble Design furnishes, she says 98 to 99 percent are in the same house a year later.

Mariah, a medical assistant and mother of four in recovery, found Humble Design through her case manager at the Alpha Project. She says it was really tough raising her children in a shelter, confined to a small bedroom. Why does furniture matter for families leaving homelessness? covers what researchers call furniture poverty.

In San Diego, a quarter of people placed into housing ended up back on the street, as Why do families end up back on the street after they get housing? reports. For how HUD’s two different housing programs work, see Rapid re-housing vs permanent supportive housing.

How can you help families in your own city stay housed?

Eviction Lab publishes its eviction map and rankings for free, so you can look up evictions in your own city at evictionlab.org. Humble Design, which works in Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland and San Diego, asks people to donate money or furniture, or volunteer on move-in days.

Outside those four cities, The Furniture Bank Network can point you to a furniture bank near you. Lead Me Home, a 2021 short by Pedro Kos and Jon Shenk, shows what living unhoused looks like. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short and is on Netflix.