Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
by Matthew Desmond
Rating: 5.0 / 5 · Read · Finished 2018-01-14
It’s expensive to be poor. There are a million ways that poverty leads to even worse poverty: get evicted, pay for storage while you search for a new place, pay late fees and court fees, find a place with higher rent because you’re rushed, miss important mail because you changed addresses, lose your welfare income because you didn’t respond to mail, pay for house repairs because your landlord won’t if you’re behind on rent, attend court hearings to fight eviction, miss work, lose job. It’s easy to get trapped in a cycle of evictions. And a record of evictions makes it harder to find new housing or apply for government assistance.
Hunger makes you angry, getting you fired, getting you into fights. Losing your job makes you depressed, more likely to use opioids. In Milwaukee, you can be evicted for calling 911 too many times (the police threaten to fine the landlord so the landlord threatens to evict the tenant).
Evictions are common because of a lack of cheap housing. The poorest Americans have to spend almost all their income on rent because there’s nothing cheaper available. And the cheapest housing often degrades below legal standards, forcing evictions yet again. When the government provides assistance in the form of housing vouchers, landlords charge more (because they can).
This book is EXTREMLEY well-sourced and written. All events were witnessed personally unless otherwise noted. Dozens of references to studies and statistical methodology in each chapter. Statistics are used to reinforce first-hand accounts, and vice versa.