Evicted

Poverty and Profit in the American City

Hardcover, 418 pages

Published March 1, 2016 by Crown.

ISBN:
978-0-553-44743-9
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4 stars (66 reviews)

From Princeton sociologist and MacArthur "Genius" Matthew Desmond, a landmark work of scholarship and reportage that will forever change the way we look at poverty in America

In this brilliant, heartbreaking book, Matthew Desmond takes us into the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee to tell the story of eight families on the edge. Arleen is a single mother trying to raise her two sons on the $20 a month she has left after paying for their rundown apartment. Scott is a gentle nurse consumed by a heroin addiction. Lamar, a man with no legs and a neighborhood full of boys to look after, tries to work his way out of debt. Vanetta participates in a botched stickup after her hours are cut. All are spending almost everything they have on rent, and all have fallen behind.

The fates of these families are in the hands of two landlords: Sherrena Tarver, a …

6 editions

Review of 'Evicted' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

"Humans act brutally under brutal conditions." -- Footnote 2 to Chapter 17. Desmond is referring to one incident between two impoverished tenants, but he could just as easily be using this as a tagline for the entire book. Sure, there's some brutality between individuals, but what he exquisitely documents is the obscene, pervasive, crushing brutality of our broken systems in the U.S.

Desmond is a remarkable observer and listener, also a phenomenal writer. He meticulously documents his experiences and findings while also drawing you in to care deeply about his subjects: a fine balance, and he pulls it off with grace -- at no small cost to his psyche, as he explains in the afterword. Desmond has a prefrontal cortex as well as a huge heart, traits that can conflict deeply; we are fortunate that he combined them to produce this powerful book.

Please read this book. I know you …

Review of 'Evicted' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

A bit like A Behind the Beautiful Forevers for Milwaukee, this is an outstanding work of journalism and utterly compelling. With honesty and leveled reasoning, Desmond shows the mundane horrors of poverty in America, and his writing so strong I could smell the shit, mold and stagnant water, feel the cold, grey slush in winter and process more sordid scenes than I wanted to see.
There are many characters who are banging their head against a wall: drugs, too many children and it seems, ridiculous financial choices. But the argument that people make poor decisions because they are poor and not that they are poor because they deserve it resonated. I was also horrified to learn about the disturbance orders, and that women are evicted because they are beaten (the cops are called, disturbance recorded, tenants asked to leave). The police are definitely in full swing as compliant apologists for …

Review of 'Evicted' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

An eye opener, or really, an eye popper!

I was conflicted over the way public help, (our tax dollars), was sort of taken for granted and the very real need for some sort of assistance for these people so they could get on their feet. There is abuse of funds and there is lives on the edge. I did not see, even at the end of this book, a sound way to prevent the abuse of funds while making funds available for those who desperately need it.

Depressing. Informative. Real. Good work by Matt Desmond.

I could not fully buy into the authors ideas on solutions at the end of the book but one must have a starting point and his is as good as any I've ever heard.

Review of 'Evicted' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

I devoured this book, and am incredibly grateful that these stories have been amplified, stats collected to drive change, and that it was written and researched with so much respect and care for the people who were forced to move, often without a place to go. Believe the hype about this book.

Review of 'Evicted' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

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 …

Review of 'Evicted' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

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 …

Review of 'Evicted' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

“There is an enormous amount of pain and poverty in this rich land,” Matthew Desmond writes in the conclusion of his powerful and well researched book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City.

The Harvard sociologist Matthew Desmond follows the intertwined fortunes of eight low-income families in the deindustrialised middle-sized city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Their main characteristic is poverty and what holds them back, Desmond argues, is rent. According to Michael Stone, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, “shelter poverty” is defined as the denial of a universal human need. It describes the condition of people who spent so much on housing that they have to cut back on other necessities, such as food and health care. It is a condition that drag those who lack the skills and smarts to fit the 21st-century economy, down.

As Desmond shows, the main victims of eviction are women. They earn …

Review of 'Evicted' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

The day Arleen and her boys had to be out was cold. But if she waited any longer, the landlord would summon the sheriff, who would arrive with a gun, a team of boot-footed movers, and a folded judge’s order saying that her house was no longer hers. She would be given two options: truck or curb. “Truck” would mean that her things would be loaded into an eighteen-footer and later checked into bonded storage. She could get everything back after paying $350. Arleen didn’t have $350, so she would have opted for “curb,” which would mean watching the movers pile everything onto the sidewalk. Her mattresses. A floor-model television. Her copy of Don’t Be Afraid to Discipline. Her nice glass dining table and the lace tablecloth that fit just-so. Silk plants. Bibles. The meat cuts in the freezer. The shower curtain. Jafaris’s asthma machine.

As the reader follows Arleen's …

Review of 'Evicted' on 'Storygraph'

4 stars

The day Arleen and her boys had to be out was cold. But if she waited any longer, the landlord would summon the sheriff, who would arrive with a gun, a team of boot-footed movers, and a folded judge’s order saying that her house was no longer hers. She would be given two options: truck or curb. “Truck” would mean that her things would be loaded into an eighteen-footer and later checked into bonded storage. She could get everything back after paying $350. Arleen didn’t have $350, so she would have opted for “curb,” which would mean watching the movers pile everything onto the sidewalk. Her mattresses. A floor-model television. Her copy of Don’t Be Afraid to Discipline. Her nice glass dining table and the lace tablecloth that fit just-so. Silk plants. Bibles. The meat cuts in the freezer. The shower curtain. Jafaris’s asthma machine.



As the reader follows Arleen's …

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