Rent For Moms is a grassroots fundraising initiative led by Black women and other marginalized genders (MaGes) that centers the family, redistributes resources and places agency where it belongs – with the Moms.
🚨In 2022 Black Lives Matter Sacramento paid the rent for 11 Black moms in Sacramento.🚨
Over the course of the campaign Rent for Moms will raise at least $100,000 to help Black moms pay rent this holiday season in Boston, MA; Binghamton, NY; Detroit, MI; Fort Lee, NJ; Oklahoma City, OK; Portland, OR; Richmond, VA; Sacramento, CA; Houston, Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas; and Washington, DC.
Though white and non-Black folks are often eager to give money around the holidays, our campaign moves beyond saviorism. Rent for Moms challenges systemic issues that maintain the need for feel-good campaigns like toy drives and giving trees, all the way back to their sources, by putting cash directly in the hands of Black moms across the country.
Rent for Moms will help subvert oppressive and predatory economic systems stacked against Black MaGes, and ensure that each family has the agency they deserve & are owed this holiday season.
Sacramento has the second-highest rent burden for Black renters in the US. Black households spend over 50% of their income on rent in the Sacramento area, whereas white households spend closer to 30%.
There are systemic forces at the heart of why many single Black moms can’t afford to buy their kids toys and struggle to pay the bills, especially during the Holidays. Decades of racial discrimination in employment, housing, lending, and the justice system have created massive wealth inequalities and left Black moms struggling to make ends meet. The statistics don’t lie.
For a single Black mother, any obstacle to paying for rent can place their families into a cycle of eviction. Together, we can stop the cycle.
“Evictions disproportionately impact Black women renters who already must grapple with a gender and racial wage gap. Housing is a gender justice and racial justice issue, and more needs to be done so that Black women can maintain a home and economic security for themselves and for their families” (National Partnership for Women & Families, 2021).
Decades of discrimination in employment, housing, lending, and the justice system have left Black moms struggling to make ends meet.
When Black moms are supported, Black communities are supported.
Housing needs to come first. When housing is not a stressor, people are able to secure better jobs and build better family and community connections.
Over 80 percent of homeowners in the United States are white (despite composing only 62 percent of the population), compared to 8 percent of homeowners who are Black (14 percent of the population) (ActRochester.org, 2017).
Although more than half of Black women have attended college, Black moms are almost twice as likely to live below the poverty level in the US compared to white or Asian Americans (Brookings Institute, 2018).
