Housing Policy as a Public Safety Measure: The Impact of Eviction Moratoriums on Firearm Suicides
Using temporal variations in the timing of policy expirations across states, the research explores how differences in eviction protections influenced mental health outcomes, with a focus on the heightened risk of suicide associated with imminent housing displacement. Findings will contribute to understanding the mental health consequences of housing instability and inform policies aimed at mitigating these risks.
Abstract
We plan to assess how the expiration of policies that buffered against residential instability impacted suicides by leveraging the temporal variation in the timing of prohibitions on eviction enforcement. We will focus on enforcement as differences in protections that can be meaningful in terms of their implications for mental health (Leifheit et al., 2021), and extreme adverse outcomes like suicide may be more likely when forcible displacement is imminent.