evicted book review

There’s no question we have a flawed system, and the cycle continues with no way out for those who are caught up in poverty and substandard living conditions. They way we treat the poor in this country is cruel. No one can afford to put 80% of their income towards rent. hat if the dominant discourse on poverty is just wrong? “With Doreen’s eviction, Thirty-Second Street lost a steadying presence – someone who loved and invested in the neighbourhood, who contributed to making the block safer – but Wright Street didn’t gain one.”. And despite Herculean efforts to deny it, nuance is where the vast majority of us live. But there is a gigantic gap in between of people trying and obstructed by environment, conditions, regulations, etc. The predatory behavior of the slumlords makes me angry, even while I sympathize with their desire not to be taken advantage of, cheated and ripped off. What if the problem is that poverty is profitable? As a result, the number of households paying more than 30 percent of their income for shelter rose to a record 21.3 million—about one in six nationwide. The judicial system and the role it plays is scrutinized, and the lives of 8 families are put on intimate display for readers to bear witness to. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. The second point is that the evictions aren’t just a consequence of poverty but also a cause. It's always hard to see and think about who has value in our society and the way laws and institutions play such a huge role in continuing to destabilize the lives of those who are already marginalized in other ways. Think about that the next time someone asks why women don’t call the cops on violent partners. On January 5, 2017 June 19, 2017 By T. Carlos "Tim" Anderson In Reviews. This stunning, remarkable book—a scholar’s 21st-century How the Other Half Lives—demands a wide audience. After he paid Sherrena his $550 rent out of his welfare cheque, Lamar had only $2.19 a day for the month. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/08/forced-out?mbid=nl_160208_Daily%20remainder&CNDID=37464528&spMailingID=8521477&spUserID=MTA5MjQwOTQzMjcyS0&spJobID=860859043&spReportId=ODYwODU5MDQzS0, New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2016 (fiction and nonfiction), Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street's Great Foreclosure Fraud, Book Editing, Author Coaching, Submit Your Book to Me, the one that Utah has used in recent years. For a distinguished and appropriately documented book of nonfiction by an American author that is not eligible for consideration in any other category, Fifteen thousand dollars ($15,000). But a positive outcome of this technique is that the accounts end up sharing many common threads: … In this book we see people who have the least being exploited for every penny. It puts incredible stress on families. What if the dominant discourse on poverty is just wrong? We (Americans) doom people to permanent poverty and a lower caste simply by not ensuring safe and adequate shelter that is affordable. This book that showcases tenants and landlords/landladies and the barriers that exists on all sides. Even among households earning between $30,000 and $45,000 a year—clerks, cooks, or low-level medical technicians, for example—nearly half pay more than the 30 percent the government says they can afford. "Evicted" is the story of eight families in Milwaukee, WI--six families struggling mightily to pay the rent on their increasingly crappy apartments, and two sets of landlords. The main reason, though, is that women are raising children as single mothers. What if the problem is that poverty is profitable? What are the social costs of eviction? These are the questions at the heart of Evicted, Matthew Desmond’s extraordinary ethnographic study of tenants in low-income housing in the deindustrialised middle-sized city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The "catch-22" of arrears, fines, penalties, and debts make my head hurt. This is real life, and it’s an incredibly important work. I actually finished this last night, and since then have been trying to figure out how to process my feelings and thoughts about this book. They are always starting over from scratch, losing their possessions in the chaos of removal, or putting them in storage and losing them when they can’t pay the fees. Sherrena Tarver, a former schoolteacher who is one of the only black female landlords in the city, makes enough in rents on her numerous properties – some presentable, others squalid – to holiday in Jamaica and attend conferences on real estate. In this book we see people who have the least being exploited for every penny. This economic exploitation is crystallized in the slum.” Exploitation. As Desmond shows, the main victims of eviction are women. What??? Following eight families, two landlords we are personally made aware of their struggles, evictions, loss of security, children and day to day poverty. There are situations that will break your heart, and situations that will infuriate you. In one of the book’s many small sad moments, Arleen claims she receives child support in order to seem more stable and respectable to a prospective landlord. There are no heroes in this book, neither the tenants or the landlords. Evicted - Matthew Desmond. Welcome back. Really horrifying and mind boggling that anyone would think that's a good policy even for reducing the amount people call the police. The brutal truth of poverty in America is far more devastating than any fiction ever could be. We desperately need a "where are they now" for the people profiled in this book. What if the problem isn’t that poor people have bad morals – that they’re lazy and impulsive and irresponsible and have no family values – or that they lack the skills and smarts to fit in with our shiny 21st-century economy? I'm not someone who tries to impress other people with what I've read. The book received the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award, the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction, and the 2017 PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award. Makes me feel quite tired. (I continue to think this book says oodles more than. Evicted Summary. There are situations that will break your heart, and situations that will infuriate you. We (Americans) doom people to permanent poverty and a lower caste simply by not ensuring safe and adequate shelter that is affordable. No easy answers here, but can we stop pretending that poverty is the result of bad life choices and that unsafe or lack of low income housing is because property owners are monolithically greedy and evil. There are no discussion topics on this book yet. This should be required reading in high school! Evicted switches back and forth between different sets of people, which sometimes makes it difficult to keep everyone's story straight. This is a must read for everyone. “Every condition exists,” Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote, “simply because someone profits by its existence. Eviction is a cause, not just a condition, of poverty . The significance of eviction, the poverty and the loss of everything that a … Written by a Harvard sociologist, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City has the character development and dramatic drive of a first-rate novel. Public housing failures. This book frequently infuriated me, but it also raised in me a strong sense of compassion for people who are struggling and a desire to look for opportunities to help and advocate for fairer housing policies. As with all things, it's not either/or, there is always nuance. Even in the Great Depression, evictions used to be rare. Eviction damages children, who are always changing schools, giving up friends and toys and pets – and living with the exhaustion and depression of their parents. It fundamentally redirects their way, casting them on a different, and much more difficult, path. This book is fucking depressing and hopeless and excellent. Book Review - Evicted Poverty & Profit In The American City. Many thanks to my local friend- Cindy - for putting this book in my hands. In this brilliant, heartbreaking book, Matthew Desmond takes us into the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee to tell the story of eight families on the edge. Long story short, America has to do better in providing shelter for the poor. Eviction makes it hard to keep up with the many appointments required by the courts and the byzantine welfare system: several characters have their benefits cut because notices are sent to the wrong address. It's a detailed picture of individual and systemic failure. This book that showcases tenants and landlords/landladies and the barriers that exists on all sides. Author Matthew Desmond spent months living in a trailer park and then an inner-city rooming house in Milwaukee, getting to know the renters and their landlords and observing firsthand what the housing crisis looks like. Evicted – Book Review. I can’t remember when an ethnographic study so deepened my understanding of American life. Decent, affordable housing should be a basic right for everybody in this country. Shelves: multi-culti, non-fiction, awards It is no surprise that "Evicted" was the University Wisconsin-Madison's Go Big Red book read for 2016, a book chosen by the chancellor and worked into campus-wide discussions and events. Buildings are not maintained, property values fall, the amount of low cost housing decreases and people are paying large rents for housing that is substandard. It’s an important book. The filthy and dangerous conditions are horrifying. [ The government says that rent and utilities are affordable if they consume no more than 30 percent of the household's income. Although this book is about Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as the author states this is a crisis effecting any large, urban city. Also the segregation! Complete coverage of entertainment in the Twin Cities and the nation, from movies and music to theater and books, with the event calendar, reviews, columns, blogs and more. One of the most heartbreaking moments in Matthew Desmond’s “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City”— and there’s a shameful assortment to choose from — … “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City” by Matthew Desmond, Crown, 418 pages, $28 “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis” by J.D. In this brilliant, heartbreaking book, Matthew Desmond takes us into the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee to tell the story of eight families on the edge. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. Public housing and housing vouchers are scarce. People such as Lamar live in chronic debt to their landlord, who can therefore oust them easily whenever it is convenient – if they demand repairs, for example, like Doreen, or if a better tenant comes along. especially when the New York legislative session has ended for the year and they failed to pass a bill to force landlords to have good cause for eviction. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of, Published Desmond lays out the crucial role housing plays in creating and reinforcing white privilege. He tells the stories of the tenants and the landlords in their own voices, with such clarity and precision that it’s almost easy to forget that this is not a novel. My God, what that book lays bare about American poverty. Barbara Ehrenreich - New York Times Book Review Written with the vividness of a novel, [ Evicted] offers a dark mirror of middle-class America’s obsession with real estate, laying bare the workings of the low end of the market, where evictions have become just another part of an often lucrative business model. It is sometimes a little hard to keep up with the storylines as they weave in and out of the text, but no matter. Arleen loses one apartment when her son Jori throws a snowball at a passing car and the enraged driver kicks in the front door, and another when the police come after Jori when he kicks a teacher and runs home. The squeeze is increasing higher incomes as well. Other sociologists – Kathryn Edin, for example – have found that single mothers often get help under the table from their children’s fathers, but Arleen, Doreen and Doreen’s adult daughter Patrice get mostly trouble from men, who are variously abusive, addicted, vanished or in prison. There has to be a better way. Yes. And the number paying more than half their incomes rose even faster, to 11.4 million, from 7.5 million, Among them, 30 percent included a full-time worker. [Between 2001 and 2014, real rents rose 7 percent while renters' incomes fell 9 percent. Stop reading this one and go find those. And racist ass Ned who made his biracial stepdaughters say "white power" while their mom hoped it wouldn't scar them. This book ought to be required reading for anyone who wants to hold elected office in this country, no matter what level you’re at. Author Matthew Desmond spent months living in a trailer park and then an inner-city rooming house in Milwaukee, getting to know the renters and their landlords and observing firsthand what the housing crisis looks like. Now, there’s a word that has been scrubbed out of the poverty debate.”, “it is hard to argue that housing is not a fundamental human need. This is what poor looks like in America. It’s easy to judge the poor but unless we’ve walked in their shoes I think we’d do better to try and understand how and why it happens, and what we as a society can and should do to remedy the problem. I can see why Desmond received one of the MacArthur Foundation’s “genius” grants and won a Pulitzer for his book. This book frequently infuriated me, but it also raised in me a strong. Eviction hits black women hardest of all, and the bleak benches of housing courts, which deal with disputes between landlords and tenants, are full of black women and their children: “If incarceration had come to define the lives of men from impoverished black neighbourhoods, eviction was shaping the lives of women. You might not think that there is a lot of money to be extracted from a dilapidated trailer park or a black neighbourhood of “sagging duplexes, fading murals, 24-hour daycares”. It’s easy to judge the poor but unless we’ve walked in their shoes I think we’d do better to try and understand. Poor black men were locked up. Scott is a gentle nurse consumed by a heroin addiction. In fact, she gets nothing. March 1st 2016 One thing that really stuck with me was the fact that landlords were getting fined for their tenants calling the cops and being nuisances, and how they applied that to people calling in about domestic abuse as well. Real life, and scumbag landlords John L. 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