Evora Sykes moved to Providence Village in 2018, but she never felt fully welcome in the Dallas-area suburb. Not when she saw neighbors in the majority-white town make hateful comments on a local Facebook group — which was often, she says — and not in June of this year, when she received a letter from her homeowners association telling her she’d have to move: The neighborhood’s board was banning renters who used federal housing choice vouchers.
A single Black mother of two who relied on housing aid to rent an over-2,000-square foot home in this new master-planned community in fast-growing Denton County, Sykes says that she immediately started looking for a new home after getting the HOA notice. “My focus was getting my children out of the neighborhood, and finding us a suitable home before school started,” she said. “There’s a lot of undercover racism out here.” In July, Sykes moved into a smaller house in another town.
