Comment

Evicted

Poverty and Profit in the American City
Dec 20, 2018
The hardest part about reading Evicted was coming to the realization that, more often than not, both sides, tenants and landlords, are only doing what is best for themselves financially, socially, or emotionally. In each of the followed characters’ story arcs, there is solid logic behind most of their actions, even if the action (i.e. an eviction of a family with children) seems so heartless with all the visibility and drama that accompanies it, or seems unwise (i.e. buying up lobster with the whole month’s allotment of food stamps). I think Desmond’s focus on the logic behind every person’s decisions prompts the reader to question the overarching systems keeping things difficult and unequal for people seeking safe, affordable housing. I like how he frames a safe place to live as a right rather than a privilege or something to be earned. The overarching problems hurting families and communities include racism, lack of built housing in many locations, generational cycles of poverty, and our government’s decision not to offer universal housing vouchers to all who would qualify for them. Evicted makes it clear that these sorts of issues are the ones we need to tackle in America, before blaming individual landlords for just thinking about their bottom line, or blaming tenants for an apparent lack of personal responsibility. I appreciate how Desmond offers tangible solutions in his epilogue, instead of leaving off in a totally depressing way; I always like when books are able to do that.