Review: Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

5 out of 5 stars - I'll tell you to read it without you asking

This books was extremely interesting to me. I knew about the basics of eviction and poverty, but this brought a lot of new information to the table. Living near Milwaukee, there were a lot of places mentioned that I could picture on a map. There was a lot of detailed, personal information about the different individuals within the book. It made it much more personal than just a data-driven book about evictions. The author mentioned that no real studies had been done on evictions and the effect on poverty, and that surprised me.

Below are a few quotes from the book that I found extremely interesting:

Today, the majority of poor renting families in America spend over half of their income on housing, and at least one in four dedicates over 70 percent to paying the rent and keeping the lights on.

Landlords were allowed to rent units with property code violations, and even units that did not meet “basic habitability requirements,” as long as they were up front about the problems.

A white person living in and writing about the inner city is not uniquely exposed to threats but uniquely shielded from them.

I also highly recommend you read the end of the book where the author discusses how he collected information. It makes the details in the book that much more interesting!

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