Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond is a heartbreaking chronicle of peoples' real experiences in the private housing market of Milwaukee. Desmond is sure to provide insight into the lives of both landlords and tenants, highlighting that, although some people think of landlording as a side job, many landlords are doing it full time. The book takes a fundamentally different approach than most ethnographies by removing the author from the story totally and solely telling the stories of real people. Desmond recounts the lives of eight families, about four on the South Side (largely white area) and four on the North Side (largely black area). Their experiences are unique from each other but outline the following: regardless of personal choices, most people's income is not enough to house and feed them or their families; women and women with children are most susceptible to eviction, regardless of drug use/abuse/etc.; drugs, particularly opiates, are a vice for many.
Though, logically, it is sensical that eviction can lead to long term quality of life issues due to disrupted home environment, chronic school absence, missing mail, etc., reading this book makes it abundantly clear. Particularly sad is the cruelty our country's private housing market shows women and children: "Walk into just about any urban housing court in America...among Milwaukee renters, over 1 in 5 black women report having been evicted in their adult life, compared with 1 in 12 Hispanic women and 1 in 15 white women," (p.299). Furthermore, children often do not eat "because the rent eats first" (p.302).
The effects of eviction are far-reaching for those evicted as well as the neighborhood; with constant movement and no stable community, the neighborhood loses its collective sense of safety or its "eyes and ears on the streets." Jane Jacobs, a famous urban planner, wrote about this extensively in Death and Life of Great American Cities.
The overarching lesson learned from this book is that poverty is a result of a number of circumstances, not the other way around. Additionally, much of the private rental market for those below the poverty line relies heavily on systematic exploitation: informational disadvantages, taking advantage of government support, using children against a tenant as a "problem."
Particularly, the federal governments noble attempt at housing vouchers must, according to Desmond, be expanded. Desmond asserts that one of the most significant issues facing renters in America is a lack of affordable supply, which can be rendered by additional vouchers as well as additional housing supply. This seems like a pretty good solution to start with.
Below are some of the salient moments in the book:
"No one thought the poor more undeserving than the poor themselves," (p.180).
Perfectly encapsulating the cyclical nature of eviction and poverty: "Ned lost his part-time construction job. He was fired for the two days of work he missed when helping his family move from the trailer park. Job loss could lead to eviction, but the reverse was also true," (p.227).
"It was once said that the poor are 'constantly exposed to evidence of their own irrelevance.'" (p.257).
Thank you, Orlando YIMBY, for finally getting me to read this book, which has been on my list for awhile.