Newark sociologist has been awarded a $1.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to evaluate the effects of pandemic eviction-prevention policies on individual and community mortality. The project will address critical questions at the intersection of housing and public health at a time when eviction rates are rising in the wake of COVID-19 moratoriums being lifted. “Our hope is that this forces some reckoning with the starkly human costs of housing instability more broadly,” said Peter Hepburn, a sociologist and demographer. “As we see eviction filing rates increase to pre-pandemic levels, we need to acknowledge the harm that’s being done, up to and including putting people at greater risk of death.”