Matthew Desmond took a deep dive into poverty and housing. He published the story of what he saw in Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. The book follows several people in deep poverty living and being evicted from terrible housing in Milwaukee. Mr. Desmond lived among them in 2008 and 2009. He split his time between the poor, white College Mobile Home Park full of the white poor on one side of town and a rooming house on the poor black side of town.
The housing problems did not appear to discriminate based on race. However, Mr. Desmond found that the vast majority of evictions were against black women. Regardless, the problem was a lack of money. Most of the subjects were scrapping by without any meaningful work or on public assistance. That assistance paid for the rent, but left little remaining after rent. They pay a crushing share of their income for rent. The book’s subjects were paying 75%+ of their income for rent. That left little for food, health care, clothing, furniture, and transportation.
Part of book’s story is that evictions are much more common than previously thought. More than one in eight Milwaukee renters faced a forced move in the course of three years. A forced move includes a larger selection of reasons beyond formal evictions, including strong arm tactics, building condemnation, and paying unwanted tenants to leave. In Milwaukee, 16 families lose their homes each day: 16,000 people being forced out of 6,000 housing units every year.
Mr. Desmond also included the two landlords in the book. They were doing better financially than their tenants, but they were not fat cats rolling in cash. There is money to be made from renting to the poor. But it also means an uneven flow of cash when rent goes unpaid, properties are damaged, and the court fees for getting an eviction. The biggest financial windfall for the landlord was when one of the buildings caught on fire. She pocketed the insurance money and bulldozed the charred remains.
The landlord are overlooking the convictions and evictions to rent to tenants that would be excluded from other mainstream housing. In exchange, the tenants overlook the poor housing conditions.
There are no easy answers in the book. In the epilogue, Mr Desmond offers some direction. It requires money. More government assistance for the poor to get housing.
The book is compelling. While not necessarily enjoyable to read, it is well written and easy to digest, as distasteful as it may be. The book has won many awards, including the Pulitzer Prize.
Publishers occasionally send me books in exchange for a review. That was the case the here.