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Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

by Matthew Desmond
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

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ISBN13: 9780553447439
ISBN10: 0553447432



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Awards

2017 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction
2017 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction

From Powells.com

Book of Now
Essential reading on timely topics.

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

From Harvard sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond, a landmark work of scholarship and reportage that will forever change the way we look at poverty in America

In this brilliant, heartbreaking book, Matthew Desmond takes us into the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee to tell the story of eight families on the edge. Arleen is a single mother trying to raise her two sons on the $20 a month she has left after paying for their rundown apartment. Scott is a gentle nurse consumed by a heroin addiction. Lamar, a man with no legs and a neighborhood full of boys to look after, tries to work his way out of debt. Vanetta participates in a botched stickup after her hours are cut. All are spending almost everything they have on rent, and all have fallen behind.

The fates of these families are in the hands of two landlords: Sherrena Tarver, a former schoolteacher turned inner-city entrepreneur, and Tobin Charney, who runs one of the worst trailer parks in Milwaukee. They loathe some of their tenants and are fond of others, but as Sherrena puts it, “Love don’t pay the bills.” She moves to evict Arleen and her boys a few days before Christmas.

Even in the most desolate areas of American cities, evictions used to be rare. But today, most poor renting families are spending more than half of their income on housing, and eviction has become ordinary, especially for single mothers. In vivid, intimate prose, Desmond provides a ground-level view of one of the most urgent issues facing America today. As we see families forced into shelters, squalid apartments, or more dangerous neighborhoods, we bear witness to the human cost of America’s vast inequality—and to people’s determination and intelligence in the face of hardship.

Based on years of embedded fieldwork and painstakingly gathered data, this masterful book transforms our understanding of extreme poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving a devastating, uniquely American problem. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible.

Review

“Written with the vividness of a novel, [Evicted] offers a dark mirror of middle-class America’s obsession with real estate, laying bare the workings of the low end of the market, where evictions have become just another part of an often lucrative business model.” Jennifer Schuessler, New York Times

Review

“Astonishing…Desmond is an academic who teaches at Harvard—a sociologist or, you could say, an ethnographer. But I would like to claim him as a journalist too, and one who, like Katherine Boo in her study of a Mumbai slum, has set a new standard for reporting on poverty.”  Barbara Ehrenreich, New York Times Book Review

Review

“An exhaustively researched, vividly realized and above all, unignorable book—after Evicted, it will no longer be possible to have a serious discussion about poverty without having a serious discussion about housing.” Jennifer Senior, New York Times

About the Author

Matthew Desmond is the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University and codirector of the Justice and Poverty Project. A former member of the Harvard Society of Fellows, he is the author of the award-winning book, On the Fireline, coauthor of two books on race, and editor of a collection of studies on severe deprivation in America. His work has been supported by the Ford, Russell Sage, and National Science Foundations, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times and Chicago Tribune. In 2015, Desmond was awarded a MacArthur “Genius” grant.

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`
njcur , June 26, 2017 (view all comments by njcur)
Excellent book. I'm very glad that Matthew Desmond wrote it. It must have been a struggle to live with this dysfunctional system for so long. I was glad for his explanation of how he did the research. Really well done, with great notes. This book explores the lives of several people in Milwaukee, both landlords and tenants. It was maddening and heartbreaking. I had to read it just bits at a time. I would get depressed and frustrated and need to read something else. Which just points up the hardship these people live with in that they cannot get away from it. This is an understudied area of poverty and really needs addressing. Mr Desmond does have some interesting ideas on how to mitigate the problems. An important book, a must read in my estimation. My thanks to Random House/Crown and NetGalley for sharing this book with me in exchange for an honest review.

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ingrid360 , June 08, 2016 (view all comments by ingrid360)
This book provides the painful nuances of what it's like to live in poverty, and humanizes the face of need. I truly don't see how any thinking, feeling person could read this and not be moved; this book shook me, in the same way that "Just Mercy" (Bryan Stevenson) shook me when I read it last year. How women who report domestic violence were subsequently evicted by landlords to appease law enforcement, and then couldn't get safe housing because of the evictions. How poverty and eviction affect children, neighborhood stability, employment. How, when a rental unit burns down, resulting in the death of an 8-month-old child, the landlord's concern appears focused solely on the loss of the building. My heart breaks for the tenants the author follows, and the seemingly insurmountable challenges they face - I so wanted a happy ending for each of them. The author also addresses in a thoughtful way why the desperately poor do things that seem nonsensical to the more affluent, like using money or food stamps to buy luxury items instead of paying for necessities, including rent. Desmond's work does an exquisite job of putting us squarely in his subjects' shoes, and it is eye-opening. This book will make you squirm, feel outraged, crushed, hopeless, and maybe mad as hell...but also perhaps more compassionate and better educated about poverty and homelessness. Can't recommend it highly enough.

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Tonstant Weader , April 11, 2016 (view all comments by Tonstant Weader)
Matthew Desmond’s ethnological study of the lives of low-income renters in Milwaukee in the tradition of Elliot Liebow’s Tally’s Corner. He follows the lives of several tenants, people paying as much as 80% of the income in rent, struggling to feed their children and keep the lights and water on. The landlords are a complex combination of casual generosity in small things combined with capricious callousness in big things. They will bring some groceries to people they are evicting in a Wisconsin winter. The tenants are more fascinating, the sort the public prefers to disdain so they pretend they deserve their lot in life, disregarding the many hurdles in their way. As you get to know them, you realize they are strong people who cope in any way they can, with resilience that inspires. Their ability to persevere in spite of one obstacle after another gives them a nobility and dignity that society may not value, but should. They may be reeling with despair, but they find the grit they need to endure and keep on. This book brought me to tears time and time again. I want to know what happened to the tenants. I want them to be living in homes now, warm and dry, with running water and solid floors and doors that don’t fall on them. I want every elected city and state leader, every senator and representative, every governor and presidential candidate to read this.My hope is that many people read it, are motivated by it and put the pressure necessary to make the changes we need.

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SeattleBookMama , February 03, 2016 (view all comments by SeattleBookMama)
This one's an absolute must-read for those interested in social justice. Thank you to Net Galley and to Crown for the DRC. Most of the text is told as narrative nonfiction, with the author shadowing eight families, some African-American, some Caucasian, through trailer parks and ghetto apartments in Milwaukee. There is a great deal of dialogue, all of which was captured with permission via digital recorder, so the text flows like good fiction. One Black landlord and one Caucasian landlord are also shadowed, and although I came away feeling that both landlords were lower than pond scum, Desmond is careful to also demonstrate the ambiguities, the times when one or the other let things slide when an eviction could have been forced; brought over some groceries for a new tenant and did not ask for repayment; gave tenants opportunities to work off back rent to avoid eviction. At the same time, we see how ultimately, almost all of what appear to be landlords’ small kindnesses are actually adding to their profit margins. He clues us in to the fact that while huge numbers of Black men are getting locked up, huge numbers of Black women, particularly mothers, are getting locked out. Full review is at Seattle Book Mama on Word Press. Highly recommended!

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Product Details

ISBN:
9780553447439
Binding:
Hardcover
Publication date:
03/01/2016
Publisher:
Crown Publishing Group (NY)
Pages:
432
Height:
1.60IN
Width:
6.70IN
Author:
Matthew Desmond
Media Run Time:
B
Subject:
Sociology-Urban Studies

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