New Study Analyzes Soaring Home Displacement Rates In Forsyth County
In The News Piece in WFDD

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Sept. 9, 2020
Tim Robustelli was quoted and FPR's research was highlighted on a radio segment from WFDD, the NPR affiliate in the Piedmont Triad of North Carolina. Robustelli discussed the program's work on housing loss in Forsyth County, North Carolina.
Over the past decade, Forsyth County has made some unflattering national news. A 2015 Harvard University study revealed its status as having the third-worst economic mobility in the United States. And a 2014 Brookings Institution study showed Winston-Salem to have the nation’s second-fastest-growing poverty rate. The Triad is also home to some of the highest eviction and mortgage foreclosure rates in the country. A new study, Displaced in America, reveals where it’s happening, who's at most risk, and why.
The year-long project was a national effort with local collaborators. In Forsyth County, researchers teamed up with Winston-Salem State and Wake Forest Universities focusing on eviction, and mortgage foreclosures, ranking more than 2,200 U.S. counties by their severity in a National Housing Loss index. Forsyth ranked 89th.
Policy analyst Tim Robustelli says housing loss here is roughly three times the national average. To answer the more difficult questions — who, where, and why — they had to dig deeper, using census data to look at specific neighborhoods.
“The ability of them to capture some of these variables is unbelievable,” says Robustelli. “If a household uses a car to commute to work. If they use public transportation. If they have health insurance. If English is a second language at home and just everything. And it gives you a much richer story of what you’re studying, who it’s happening to, and where it’s happening.”
Robustelli says one story told by the numbers is just how hard it is to simply find a place to live.
Listen to the segment, which includes interview bites from our research partners at Wake Forest and Winston-Salem State, here.