evicted poverty and profit in the american city

In addition, an epilogue is provided in which Desmond details potential solutions to the housing insecurity crisis. As Desmond follows his subjects through these encounters, the reader begins to understand the mounting obstacles the poor face in overcoming each successive barrier to finding safe, affordable housing. By embedding himself with his subjects, Desmond reveals how and why eviction has social, economic, and personal costs that impact the lives of at-risk families.Įvicted is divided into three sections providing the reader with an understanding of how tenants and landlords negotiate the rent and navigate their relationship how evictions are conducted and the consequences of eviction. Centering on Milwaukee’s mostly Black inner-city North Side and a mostly White mobile home park on Milwaukee’s South Side, Desmond demonstrates how evictions and housing instability cut across racial lines and affect the poor inequitably. The author’s rich description of the renters and landlords he shadows provides a vivid account of the individual and institutional problems that intensify housing insecurity. Desmond follows a total of eight families from two communities as they attempt to find affordable housing for themselves and their families. Throughout his book, Desmond reveals how governmental programs, landlords, and the grueling continuous search to find safe and affordable housing ensnares already vulnerable populations in a perverse cycle, where evicted families increasingly pay a greater share of their income for rent, making it nearly impossible to escape poverty. In Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, Matthew Desmond provides a revealing ethnography of how housing insecurity fuels a cycle of poverty, trapping generations of Americans in an intractable system stacked against poor renters.

Evicted poverty and profit in the american city