Diane's Reviews > Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

Wow, this is a powerful look at what it means to be poor in America.

The book follows eight families in the Milwaukee area, all facing eviction problems. Some of the families are white, some are black, some have children. All of them struggled to pay the monthly rent, which seemed ridiculously high for the broken-down places they got.

Families have watched their incomes stagnate, or even fall, while their housing costs have soared. Today, the majority of poor renting families in America spend over half of their income on housing, and at least one in four dedicates 70 percent to paying the rent and keeping the lights on. Millions of Americans are evicted every year because they can't make rent.

Matthew Desmond, who is a sociology professor at Harvard, spent time living among the families and following their routines. He also interviewed and followed two landlords. His research and writing took years, and it shows in the quality of his work.

I listened to this book on audio, but I'm glad I had a print copy to refer to because there were dozens of amazing passages I marked. There were things in this book that made me gasp in shock. Several times I swore at the injustice of it all.* In the end, Desmond offers some possible solutions to improve the housing and eviction problems in this country.

Evicted reminded me of two other great books about class and poverty: Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrereich, in which she sees how challenging it is to work and survive on minimum wages; and Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo, which follows poor families in a slum in Mumbai. Evicted is a worthy addition to the research on poverty, and I highly recommend it.

*What Made Me Angry
I'm going to rant a little about some of the issues I learned from this book. One part that made me drop the F-bomb because I couldn't believe the insanity of it, was how tenants in the inner city can actually be penalized and evicted if they call 911 "too many times." In this book, a young woman named Crystal hears a neighbor woman being beaten by her boyfriend, and Crystal calls 911. But the Milwaukee Police determine that too many 911 calls have come from Crystal's apartment, and they notify the landlord (in this paragraph I'll call her a slumlord, since she exploited her tenants and did next to nothing to make the urban properties livable). The slumlord tells police she'll evict the tenants, which is eventually what happens. Desmond says this problem happens ALL THE TIME. He says battered women face a devil's bargain: "Keep quiet and face abuse, or call the police and face eviction." What. The. Fuck. Oh! I almost forgot the most enraging part. At one point, the Milwaukee police chief held a news conference to address the high number of women who've been killed in domestic violence incidents, and he expresses disbelief at how few of the victims contacted the police department. You've got to be fucking kidding me. Guy, it's your department's own backward policies that are helping to kill those women!

I was also furious about how the slumlords exploited their impoverished tenants, and refused to invest any money in the properties to make them livable. It was deplorable behavior. And the fact that the slumlords claim they're helping the tenants, and trying to do good in the neighborhood, is seriously questionable.

There was also an eye-opening section on the "poverty mentality," and how those who are deeply impoverished aren't necessarily poor because they throw money away, but they throw money away because they are poor. Those in deep poverty lack hope that their situation will ever improve. Their argument is: What's the point of saving a few dollars by denying myself a few luxuries (such as cable TV, or a nice dinner) if I'm always going to be broke, and always struggling to make the rent? They're trying to live "in color" for just a little bit. Of course, it's easy for those of us with a financial safety net and loved ones who could help us in times of trouble to look down on those at the bottom and frown on them. But unless you've been so low that you have no hope for tomorrow, it's difficult to judge those in deep despair.

Great Passages
"Evictions... [embroil] not only landlord and tenants but also kin and friends, lovers and ex-lovers, judges and lawyers, dope suppliers and church elders. Eviction's fallout is severe. Losing a home sends families to shelters, abandoned houses, and the street. It invites depression and illness, compels families to move into degrading housing in dangerous neighborhoods, uproots communities, and harms children. Eviction reveals people's vulnerability and desperation, as well as their ingenuity and guts."

"If incarceration had come to define the lives of men from impoverished black neighborhoods, eviction was shaping the lives of women. Poor black men were locked up. Poor black women were locked out."

"It was next to impossible for people to survive deep poverty on their own. If you could not rely on your family, you could reach out to strangers, make disposable ties. But it was a lot to ask of someone you barely knew."

"There was always something worse than the trailer park, always room to drop lower."

"Substandard housing was a blow to your psychological health: not only because things like dampness, mold, and overcrowding could bring about depression but also because of what living in awful conditions told you about yourself."

"Poverty could pile on; living it often meant steering through gnarled thickets of interconnected misfortunes and trying not to go crazy. There were moments of calm, but life on balance was facing one crisis after another."

"The home is the center of life. It is a refuge from the grind of work, the pressure of school, and the menace of the streets. We say that at home, we can 'be ourselves." Everywhere else, we are someone else. At home, we remove our masks."

"The persistence and brutality of American poverty can be disheartening, leaving us cynical about solutions. But ... a good home can serve as the sturdiest of footholds. When people have a place to live, they become better parents, workers, and citizens."