Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

by Matthew Desmond

During its rapid period of urbanization, America imported this model. Colonial proprietors adopted the institutions and laws of England’s landed gentry, including the doctrine of absolute liability for rent, which held tenants unequivocally responsible for payments even in the event of fire or flood. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, America’s poor lived in cellars, attics, cattle sheds, and windowless rooms that held multiple families.13 Some slums were cut off from basic municipal services and local wells; so families begged for water in other parts of town.14 Rents continued to rise as living conditions deteriorated. Soon, many families could not afford their housing. When this happened, landlords could summon the “privilege of distress,” which entitled them to seize and sell tenants’ property to recover lost profit, a practice that persisted well into the twentieth century.15