Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

by Matthew Desmond

During rent strikes, tenants believed they had a moral obligation to one another.5 If tenants resisted excessive rent hikes or unwarranted evictions, it was because they invested in their homes and neighborhoods. They felt they belonged there. In the trailer park, that sentiment was almost dead. For most residents, Scott among them, the goal was to leave, not to plant roots and change things. Some residents described themselves as “just passing through,” even if they had been passing through nearly all their life. One, an out-of-work father of three who powered his trailer with stolen electricity, said, “We don’t let family come here. It’s not us. It’s lower-class living, and I didn’t come from this.” Lenny’s ex-wife, who being Lenny’s ex-wife was virtually married to the trailer park at one time, liked to tell people, “You forget that I’m the one that used to go to the opera.” Tam, the pregnant drug addict, thought of the trailer park “as a hotel.”