Matthew Desmond’s Pulitzer Prize-winning ethnography pulls no punches when it comes to the rampant lack of affordable housing throughout the United States. For more than a year before writing his book, Desmond lived in some of Milwaukee’s most impoverished communities, following eight families struggling to scrape by from one housing eviction to another.
As part of his research, Desmond uncovered alarming facts such as this one—between 2009 and 2011, more than 1 in 8 Milwaukee renters experienced a forced move. What’s more, we learn that Milwaukee is not unusual; cities across the country abound with renters in similar situations, from Kansas City to Cleveland and Chicago to Los Angeles.
“A problem as big as the affordable-housing crisis calls for a big solution. It should be at the top of America’s domestic-policy agenda—because it is driving poor families to financial ruin and even starting to engulf families with moderate incomes. Today, over 1 in 5 of all renting families in the country spends half of its income on housing. America can and should work to make its cities livable again.”
Because Evicted is an ethnography, we also come face to face with the human side of Desmond’s research—his late nights and early mornings with the everyday people living in one of Milwaukee’s trailer parks and in its urban core. And through the pages, we experience what it might be like to live on nearly nothing, day in and day out. That’s the true beauty of this work—while it’s a work of non-fiction, the book reads like a novel, and one you can’t put down.
If you haven’t yet read Evicted and care about ending poverty in the U.S., get a copy and prepare yourself for the avalanche of emotions that are sure to follow. And then, pick yourself up and figure out what you can do to help end this scourge on our towns and cities. As Desmond says in the book’s epilogue: “Whatever our way out of this mess, one thing is certain. This degree of inequality, this withdrawal of opportunity, this cold denial of basic needs, this endorsement of pointless suffering—by no American value is this situation justified. No moral code or ethical principle, no piece of scripture or holy teaching, can be summoned to defend what we have allowed our country to become.” It’s up to all of us to make sure that what we’ve allowed our country to become can be changed.—Jessica Hoey, Missouri CAN Director of External Affairs
Matthew Desmond is a social scientist and ethnographer revealing the impact of eviction on the lives of the urban poor and its role in perpetuating racial and economic inequality. In his investigations of the low-income rental market and eviction in privately owned housing in Milwaukee, Desmond argues persuasively that eviction is a cause, rather than merely a symptom, of poverty.
