Evicted - Matthew Desmond - 2016

 

Kind of long. Thanks to google for recommending. Strong academic basis for the data in the book and it is basically easy to read. The way Matt collected the stories for this book is cool. He lived in a trailer park and then in the hood of Milwaukee and personally got to know everyone. 

This book is nonfiction. It really shows the ins and outs of being an inner city landlord including attending court. On a macro level it discusses problems tenants face and proposes some policy solutions. He proposes more legal representation for tenants and more housing vouchers for tenants. These are good ideas but I am not sure who is going to pay for it. Matt’s idea is that if we stop evictions now there will be fewer costs later. I don’t disagree with this but I am not sure if evictions are the main or only problem that causes other problems and then more money. I think his book does a great job showing that evictions are a huge problem (and they are) but probably there are a variety of factors causing hardship in people’s lives and evictions are one of them. 

This book is very sad. Many of the tenants are constantly evicted. They were often abused as children. Many have children and when they are evicted their children have to keep switching schools. This is an eye opening book. I did not realize people had such a hard time with housing. I feel bad about people who were abused when they were young and who never really had a home. That is really terrible and I cannot imagine how their lives must have been and are today. You can make an argument that in some cases these people have brought hardship upon themselves. However in cases of systemic abuse and growing up in the foster care system I think it is very hard to blame them. Many tenants have simply had a very difficulty life due to a variety of negative things that happened to them or their family members. 

Apparently the author’s parents also lost their house to the bank at some point. The tenant landlord relationship is also crazy. In one instance the landlord and tenant met in court to dispute the rent but after the hearing the landlord drove the tenant back home (home being the property she was about to be evicted from). It is a tough love situation. 

Another interesting thing I learned is that in some instances the government sets a limit on the rent (in a poor area for example) that can be charged. Well sometimes the limit is higher than what the market charges so the landlords actually make more money thanks to the government calculations. This is interesting and not really good for renters in poor neighborhoods. 

Not the greatest book ever but definitely well researched and worth reading. I really enjoyed it. And really kudos to Matt for going on the ground and meeting the people where they are and telling the story from there. He has my respect. I think he said this is called ethnography. I am not sure what I am reading next. Me and Scott just strolled through Barnes and Noble so I have some ideas. Peace.