evicted poverty and profit in the american city

Defined by three sections – Rent, Out, and After – it follows eight families who are caught up in the eviction process. Thus, Evicted is built upon the rigorous study of a large number of data sources.Įvicted is written as a non-fiction story. In addition to these studies, Desmond analysed a vast number of records to validate his observations and deepen his understanding.

Desmond carried out another study between January and February 2011: the Milwaukee Eviction Court Study. He also subsequently carried out the Milwaukee Area Renters Study (MARS) between 20, which interviewed approximately 1,100 tenants and “collected new data on housing, residential mobility, eviction and poverty” (pages 329 to 330). As mentioned above, Evicted is informed by ethnographic research that Desmond predominantly carried out between May 2008 and December 2009 in the US city of Milwaukee in Wisconsin (page xi). Through his search for a process that bound the rich and poor together, he came to eviction. Through Desmond’s remarkable ethnographic research and other quantitative analysis, it offers a “new portrait of the powerful ways that the private housing sector is shaping the lives of poor American families and their communities” and the immense problem of eviction (page 333).ĭesmond says this book was born out of his desire to write about poverty and to understand it as a relationship between the rich and poor. Do not pass by this book out of fear of heartache, however. As Desmond confesses himself, seeing the level of poverty and suffering that he did during his research “was heartbreaking and left me depressed for years” (page 328). It is impossible to read Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond and not be significantly affected.

Evicted poverty and profit in the american city