Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

by Matthew Desmond

Tenants did bind together upon learning that the trailer park might be shut down; this was their “extraordinary moment.” But after that moment passed, things went back to normal. They did not question the rent, fight for better housing conditions, or assign a political narrative to evictions. Their quibble had been with their alderman, not their landlord. Once, tenants did circulate a petition. It asked for the removal of a woman seen as a snitch and general troublemaker. “We are asking that Grace in trailer S12 be evicted from the trailer park before matters get worse…” the petition read. “We feel the only way to resolve this problem is to remove her before someone resolves it, and we don’t need for it to come to that.” Forty people signed what came to be known as the Petition Against Grace.