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See me discuss this book briefly in my February wrap up: https://youtu.be/Gt2n_kr6Q80?t=5m55s
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4.5 stars. My only complaint was the difficulty in keeping the different people straight as the book jumped between stories. This book was truly an amazing piece of research and writing. In retrospect I wish I had read the section at the end “About This Project” first because then I would have had an even greater appreciation for the sheer amount of research Desmond did, not only the ethnography but the quantitative studies as well. But, as he says in that section, he didn’t want the story to be
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What an important work! I give this book 5 GLOWING stars. The book tells the stories of multiple family's struggles with housing. I learned so much. I was so clueless. Shelter, a house, really is a fundamental basic necessity upon which a decent life can be built. And America has failed it's desperate citizens, once again failing in it's own myth of being a leading nation. Many other nations have some sort of universal housing coverage, all their people have shelter. Universal housing saves mone
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4.5 rounded up. A bit overwritten, but important. It's part of my autodidactic syllabus on housing in the US, and it didn't disappoint. While much of it is consumed with the individual narratives of people struggling through evictions, there is much more on quantitative data and policy recommendations concentrated in the last couple of chapters. Plus, he's made it available open source, so bonus points for that. Have to admit: made me yearn a bit for that moment in my life when I thought ethnogr
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Nov 27, 2016
Alison
rated it
it was amazing
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review of another edition
Shelves:
nonfiction,
dcpl_elibrary
This is a frustrating and heartbreaking look into poverty and housing, centered around the things that can cause, and be caused by, eviction. The author follows several people - landlords and tenants - living in Milwaukee, and looks carefully at the far-reaching effects of eviction, which go well beyond the obvious.
