Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

In this work of non-fiction, Matthew Desmond, a Harvard sociologist, takes us to Milwaukee where we become intimately engaged in the lives of eight impoverished families. Among these, we meet Arleen- who is trying to raise her children on food stamps, Crystal – who has been in and out of the foster system since she was a young child, and Scott – who is a successful nurse-turned heroin addict who lost it all (among others). We also meet their landlords Sherrena (who owns many dilapidated inner-city units) and Tobin (the owner of a run-down trailer park). Through thorough and expansive research, Desmond walks the reader through the lives of these people — their decision making processes, the choices (and non-choices) that led them to where they are, and the laws and loopholes that work against the poorest and most vulnerable members of our society. To me, Evicted was an extremely worthwhile read, for many reasons. First, I do not read a lot of non-fiction, because the writing is often too clinical to hold my interest. This book though, reads like a novel. Desmond lived with, and visited with many of these families on a daily basis for three years. We come to know them as we would a friend, and he tells their stories in a chronological, plot-like way. I wanted to know what would happen next to each of them– I felt invested in their well-being, and frustrated when I read about their lives’ numerous drawbacks. Desmond did an excellent job of writing this book from a non-biased view. I personally believe this to be an accomplishment in and of itself; since he witnessed most of the noted events first-hand, I can only imagine how difficult it was to keep his opinion free and clear of his writing. Yet, he managed it and I appreciated that. I despise when an author tells me, either implicitly or explicitly how I am supposed to feel about about an event. In doing this, an author is not only suggesting that his/her thought and opinion is the “right” opinion, but also that I’m not intelligent enough to draw my own conclusions — which is an assumption based in condescension and inaccuracy, and is wholly insulting. Desmond left his own opinion out of his reporting – he recalled these events masterfully – completely and chock full of detail, but without any implied judgement. His writing is powerful, and allows the reader to form their own opinions. Further, Desmond provides the reader with significant background information regarding the laws around food-stamps, eviction processes, and the inaccessibility of resources for some of our cities’ most impoverished residents. Because he explained these laws and processes in layman’s terms, I was able to understand why a person might make the decisions that they did. I value logic, and when I cannot understand the logic behind one’s decisions, I become frustrated and impatient. For example, one of the women spent much of her food-stamp allocation for the month on lobster tails and lemon meringue pie. For one meal. Normally, I would think, “Now see — this, this here is the problem.” The author understood that his reader would feel this way, and went on to explain just how difficult it is to drive oneself out of grinding poverty. “People lived with so many compounded limitations that it was difficult to imagine the amount of good behavior or self-control that would allow them to lift themselves out of poverty….those at the bottom had little hope of climbing out even if they pinched every penny. So they chose not to. Instead, they tried to survive in color, to season the suffering with pleasure.” This actually made sense to me. I cannot even begin to imagine feeling so low, and with the author’s careful and logical explanation, I realized that until I live it, I shouldn’t judge it. This brings me to my final point. I admittedly understand little about our nation’s housing laws and the difficulties that are faced by those who live within the throes of urban decay. I know how expensive apartments are (the Boston area has some of the highest rents and mortgages in the country), and how exhausting the housing search can be. However, even at my poorest moments, when my bank account was completely in the red, I was not without my soft resources (successful parents who’d rather not watch their child become homeless or starve, friends with the ability and willingness to help, a graduate level education and the ability to procure a job that would pay me a steady salary). In short – I can’t fathom the struggle. The people highlighted in this book do not have these soft resources — they are completely on their own. The author surely knew that most of his readers, (with the ability to spend $13.99 on his book for their reading pleasure), might not be able to comprehend the lives and struggles that these people are living — but he made me want to try. I wasn’t left with any anger over the spending or perceived wasting of tax dollars; rather, I finished the book with a confused feeling – a “in what universe does that law make sense?” type of sentiment. I’m sure this was Desmond’s hope for his book, to provide his reader with an eye-opening experience which, at least in my case, was successful. To read more of my reviews, go to my blog at [...]

This book is very important and very well written, highly recommend this read!!

If your landlord signs the eviction papers, movers will simply show up at your door unannounced. Like an antimatter Santa Claus, they’ll gather your belongings and dump them curbside, with the common trash, or for an added fee, they’ll store everything until you can collect and move it. Chances are, though, if you’re too broke to cover rent, you’re also too broke for storage or relocation, so very probably, you’ll lose everything in one morning. Social scientists have written extensively about poverty as an all-encompassing phenomenon, often folding eviction among poverty’s other crushing outcomes. But sociologist Matthew Desmond wondered about eviction, the tenant’s forced removal, in its own right. He followed eight households in 2007 and 2008 as their landlords turned them out, and two landlords struggling to make a living against delinquent payments. The observations he records are chilling. Sadly, they won’t surprise anybody who’s ever risked missing rent. The households Desmond follows break into two camps: chronically impoverished Black city dwellers, and dead-broke White trailer-park denizens. Most are receiving some form of government poverty protection, in the form of food stamps, disability insurance, or other welfare. These protections, however, have remained frozen at such low levels for decades, while rents have skyrocketed, that after paying the landlord, they often have under $100 for every expense all month, including feeding and clothing their children. Desmond’s two landlords break likewise, but aren’t in similar straits. Sherrena mainly rents to tenants who are Black like herself, while Tobin governs his White trailer park through low-wage employees, whom he hires on-site. Both are full-time landlords, meaning they make their living by maintaining their properties and collecting rent. If their tenants don’t pay promptly, they can’t cover their own expenses. They sometimes dance as close to penury as their tenants, but not often. As Desmond tells his subjects’ stories, some important themes quickly arise. Tenants want the dignity and stability which the home brings. Desmond conveys this hunger when they tell their stories in their own words. They want to collect their mail reliably, send their kids to just one school, and where possible, look for work. But they can’t. Once you’ve been evicted, finding another house is nigh-impossible, so looking for safe housing becomes a full-time job. Permanent insecurity becomes the dominant force in tenants’ lives. Work, family, and community become secondary to finding four walls. Though he tries to avoid too many narrator interjections, Desmond does quote some sociological research to contextualize his observations: researchers have demonstrated that lacking a stable address makes people less likely to engage with their communities. They live life in permanent expectation that they’ll be forcibly uprooted tomorrow. For children especially, this imprinting has lifelong consequences. Landlords, meanwhile, aren’t necessarily villains. Some, like Sherrena, enter the property business because it’s their ticket to economic stability and growth. Desmond describes Sherrena, a former schoolteacher and welfare recipient, overcoming her own poverty to afford Carribean vacations and expensive date nights with her husband. Unfortunately, the more property she owns, the more her property owns her. Before long, she finds herself enforcing regulations full-time, while denigrating her tenants to preserve her own fragile sanity. Reading Desmond’s prose, it’s clear he’s desperately trying to remain neutral on the conflict between landlords and evicted tenants. His sympathies, however, patently lie with the tenants. Fear and desperation increase the likelihood that they’ll make catastrophic mistakes and get evicted again. This means they have an adversarial relationship, not only with their landlords, but with other institutions of civic order, especially the police, who enforce property laws. Then the 2007 housing crisis hits. Something Desmond treads carefully around, but avoids addressing too directly, is: housing cannot be a universal human right, and a lucrative capital investment, simultaneously. Landlords can only profit, and therefore make a living, if housing is valuable, meaning scarce in relation to demand. Given the choice between property rights and human dignity, the system demands that landlords choose property, because if they don’t, they’ll lose their own dignity, too. The system is rigged to protect stuff. This book began as Desmond’s doctoral dissertation, and that influence remains visible. Though he’s worked to translate his most opaque passages into vernacular English, and has retained his subjects’ coarse language, he sometimes has to explain difficult context, which can mean passages of dense academese. These passages are rare, though. Desmond has mostly crafted a chilling account of how property, or the lack, transforms human value systems. This book is tough reading without feeling convicted.

Excelente libro! Muy bien documentado, evidenciando una realidad muy difícil para aquellos afroamericanos que viven apenas por encima de la línea de pobreza.

Just started reading the book. It is very insightful and interesting

As a anti poverty activist this book made so much sense to me. More people need to understand the impact homelessness has on those living in poverty. Information and personal stories were presented in a way that helps the reader to understand the realities of so many people . Sad to say that the cost of living keeps going up- housing prices and rentals will be going up- and the number of people who will end up homeless will also increase. This is a very serious problem.

Excellent, compassionate and well constructed account of the travails of poverty and the private rental market in America. The stories are compelling without being ghoulish or voyeristic, and the graphic pain mediated by the facts and context of the situations. It is clear the author is familiar enough with his subjects to be underneath the skin of his story. Highly recommended reading for anyone who questions or despairs about the divide between wealth and equity in our developed economies.

unbelievable that all that happens in the US, once the greatest country in the world.