On July 23, 2021, Sandra S Park, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Women’s Rights Project, submitted testimony as an invited speaker to the New York Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights highlighting how eviction-related policies and practices can result in intersectional racial and gender discrimination. Park drew on her own experiences from her fourteen years at the American Civil Liberties Union to make the following points: 1) Evictions are a racial and gender justice issue; 2) Eviction records unfairly restrict tenants’ housing for years, locking out people of color, and particularly Black women, from housing that offers greater opportunity; 3) Crime-free and nuisance ordinances and crime-free housing programs result in unjust and discriminatory evictions; 4) The threat of eviction is often used as a tool to commit sexual harassment targeting Black women; and 5) Structural inequality is built into the unfairness of evictions proceedings. Park’s submission concludes with recommendations to the federal and New York state governments.
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