Evicted

This is a book about the eviction crisis in America. It is an incredibly powerful, but ultimately very sad book. It really brought the stories of the tenants and the landlords to life in a very powerful way. The tenants in this book are all victims of our unwillingness to assist the poor with housing, even though housing costs continue to rise. People were living in places without stoves, refrigerators, heat, etc., because they had no choice. In some cases, even homeless shelters provided better services than one's own apartment.

The system, at least in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is rigged against tenants (and Wisconsin is not alone in this). Very few states have strong protections for tenants. Entire neighborhoods are torn apart by evictions. For some of the people in this book, their lot in life appears to be their own fault (addiction, inability to hold a job, etc), but eviction becomes a vicious cycle. You don't go to work because you're moving, and you lose your job. You lose your job, and you can't pay your rent and you get evicted. Landlords evict people for calling the police because of domestic abuse happening in a nearby apartment, because landlords get cited if the police show up too often at their properties. People lose their welfare benefits because they've moved and remembering to call the welfare office was the last thing on their mind. And then they get evicted. Landlords purposely refuse to repair property because it costs money, and if residents complain, the landlord finds a reason to evict them. In other words, no one wins but the landlords.

This book is incredibly depressing, but incredibly important. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in sociology, or just the plight of the poor in the United States.

Social problems can seem intractable because they're the result of so many interlocking social factors and public policies that it's tough to know what to address first. "Evicted" illuminates this by doing a fantastic job of tracing the individual stories of a large cast of real-world characters and relating how they interact and the (sometimes flawed) thinking behind the decisions they make.

The author doesn't cast blame on any one group, but rather looks non-judgmentally at the motivations of everyone involved: landlords who often try to cut tenants a break but are managing their own expenses, tenants who are trying to make ends meet but find themselves dealing with unexpected complications, social workers running programs like addiction treatment that don't come close to meeting demand, and sheriff's deputies who try to be compassionate as they carry out their duties. At the same time, he doesn't absolve certain individuals who make terrible decisions and others who try to profit off other people's misery.

On the whole, however, most are portrayed as good people just trying to get by, trapped in the cycle of poverty that evictions tend to make even more unbreakable. He also delves into that mechanism by describing the consequences of evictions (loss of government benefits, inability to access tenant legal protections like building codes, etc.) that help perpetuate the cycle. Particularly notable is the evident impact on the kids, constantly forced to switch schools with each move consequently forcing them ever further behind their classmates. As the author puts it, eviction is a cause, not just a condition, of poverty -- and he does an excellent job of laying out why. The book concludes with some proposed solutions, and a reason for optimism if we have the will to implement them.

This is one of the most depressing books I've read recently (and I've read a lot of depressing non-fiction.) But it's an important read - I really recommend it.

He follows a number of people in Milwaukee, WI to look at how poverty makes housing uncertain, and how evictions make things so much worse. He follows tenants as well as landlords. You get a peek into how they live their daily lives.

It is so clear how the incentives, both for tenants and landlords, are such that people are continually stuck in a cycle of sub-standard housing, evictions, and homelessness. And the timing and setting doesn't even address the issues that arise when housing is as expensive it is in some coastal cities. There are simple solutions to this problem - solutions we know are unlikely to be politically possible in this country.

Anyway, it's a really well written, engaging, and worth a read.

This is a work of non fiction, the story of 8 families and their struggle to make ends meet, and their often times less than sympathetic slum lords.
I would say it is an unbiased look, showing both sides from the perspective of tenants and their landlords but in a matter of fact way.

The reason I wanted to read this book was because we struggled ourselves to make it through the recession and I was curious what it was like for these other families. However our own situation was quite different in that we were never on welfare or SSI and we were never criminals or drug users or from families with a long history of broken homes and unwanted pregnancies. Our financial collapse was due to my husband's employer living large and committing tax fraud, and deducting social security from everyone's pay while not actually paying social security. When the company went into receivership and then out of business owing everyone 2 weeks pay we were already falling behind in our bills. So that additional month that it took from the time they closed to the time the first too small unemployment check arrived was brutal and the closest we have ever come to being homeless. We were not at all prepared to go 6 weeks with 0 income, and that coupled with the fact that there just plain were no jobs made for the most difficult year of our lives.

Anyway back to the book, this was a well written and well researched look at poverty in America and the landlords who make their living off the poverty stricken.