Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

by Matthew Desmond

We have failed to fully appreciate how deeply housing is implicated in the creation of poverty. Not everyone living in a distressed neighborhood is associated with gang members, parole officers, employers, social workers, or pastors. But nearly all of them have a landlord.

She had an understanding with the universe that she could strike out into nothing and through her own gumption and intelligence come back with a good living.

The truth was that Doreen and Patrice didn’t expect much from Malik, not because of anything he had done, but because of their own experiences with men.

If incarceration had come to define the lives of men from impoverished black neighborhoods, eviction was shaping the lives of women. Poor black men were locked up. Poor black women were locked out.10

Hispanic and African American neighborhoods had been targeted by the subprime lending industry: renters were lured into buying bad mortgages, and homeowners were encouraged to refinance under riskier terms. Then it all came crashing down. Between 2007 and 2010, the average white family experienced an 11 percent reduction in wealth, but the average black family lost 31 percent of its wealth. The average Hispanic family lost 44 percent.7

It was next to impossible for people to survive deep poverty on their own.8 If you could not rely on your family, you could reach out to strangers, make disposable ties. But it was a lot to ask of someone you barely knew.9

Mass resistance was possible only when people believed they had the collective capacity to change things.