Book Review — Matthew Desmond's Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

There has been a lot of discussion lately about the housing crisis and the lack of affordable housing. As is often the case, these things have a disproportionate effect on people who are less well-off. But what is it really like? 

When a citizen spoke up at a recent Pointe-Claire city council meeting, we started to get a sense. He explained that the building where he lives was recently sold for well over its municipal evaluation. As a result, the landlord’s taxes went up markedly and the increase was passed on to his tenants. The question was what the city could do to help. The answer, it seems, is “not much.” 

Wanting to learn more about the situation, I turned to Matthew Desmond’s book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, which I had seen on a recent list of the best books of the 21st century. 

Evicted is the story of eight Milwaukee families who experienced eviction in 2008-2009. If the book were a picture, it might be a high-contrast black and white photo, not because it makes simplistic moral judgements, but because of how the story is told. In fact, the author steers well clear of condemning his subjects, describing landlord and tenant alike in gritty, factual prose. 

I learned a lot from the book. Before reading it, I imagined that eviction was a straightforward process where a tenant was evicted and maybe ended up living in a shelter or on the street. In reality, it’s a lot messier than that. A landlord may get an eviction order, but opt to use it as leverage against the tenant rather than moving them out. In one excerpt, a tenant who has just been evicted is still there when the new tenant arrives to move in. Seeing the old tenant’s desperation, she agrees to let her stay, and they become roommates for a time. 

In one of the most harrowing passages, a baby dies in a fire apparently set off by a lamp that got knocked over. The grandfather and the two other siblings he was babysitting managed to escape the blaze; the landlord took home an insurance payout and bought two new units. 

As a lawyer, I thought one of the most interesting aspects of the book was its treatment of the relationship between the law and people’s everyday reality. For example, Desmond discusses a Milwaukee bylaw whereby landlords can be fined if the police get too many nuisance calls from their building. Presumably, this measure was put in place to motivate landlords to assume more responsibility for goings on in their buildings. But the perverse effect was that tenants were dissuaded from calling 9-1-1 if they were the victim of a crime, notably women who experienced domestic violence, because they knew they might get evicted if they did so. 

There’s a lot more to mention about the book, e.g. its depiction of the interplay between eviction, crime, homelessness, and addiction, as well as its exploration of eviction’s disproportionate effect on women, racial minorities, and especially families with children. 

However, one question that I wondered about throughout the narrative was “How did he do it?” In an opening note, Desmond states that he witnessed all of the events first-hand, but that the names of the people and places had been changed for privacy reasons. Only in the final chapter, “About this Project,” does he explain his methods. As it turns out, Desmond, a Princeton Sociology Professor, moved to the trailer park where many of the people in his narrative lived. He developed relationships with them and accompanied them throughout the events he describes. He also befriended the trailer park’s security guard and later moved in with him in an apartment in an inner city neighbourhood where a second cluster of “characters” lived. 

This made me wonder how the people in this account feel about how they were depicted, and whether they feel like they got a fair deal out of their involvement. Desmond says they were happy to share their stories; as readers, we have to take his word for it. 

In the end, “Evicted” is an account of the landlords and tenants of Milwaukee and having read it, I realize that the situation is very different there. At least on paper, Quebec renters have many protections that folks in Milwaukee don’t, notably a strong right to remain in their dwellings. On paper, Quebec tenants have the right to know what the last tenant paid in rent on an apartment and challenge any increase that they find unreasonable. However, there is no registry of rents, meaning that new tenants have to rely on the landlord for this information.

Despite these differences, I suspect evictions and renovictions play an important role in cycles of poverty, crime, and addiction here in Quebec. In any case, Evicted stands on its own as a compelling history, and I recommend it to anyone who has an interest in social justice and affordable housing issues.