Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

by Matthew Desmond

It can be overwhelming to consider how much happiness has been lost, how many capabilities snuffed out, by the swell of poverty in this land and our collective decision not to provide all our citizens with a stable and decent place to live.

Decent, affordable housing should be a basic right for everybody in this country. The reason is simple: without stable shelter, everything else falls apart.

Exploitation. Now, there’s a word that has been scrubbed out of the poverty debate.42 It is a word that speaks to the fact that poverty is not just a product of low incomes. It is also a product of extractive markets.