Evicted - 3/14/21

 Hello Renters and Homeowners, 

Book 13: Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (9/10)

Premise: Follow 8 Families, Landlords and Renters around the City of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, through new apartments, evictions, and homelessness. 

The people in this book do not share a certain age range, ethnicity, economic background, or academic background. They range from just 18 to well past retirement age. From people with careers to those who live off the government. It's diverse in it's cast, but heavily focus's on landlords who find it common to evict tenets, and tenets who are getting evicted. The author, Matthew Desmond, also scatters in numerous references to social, ecological, and racial studies on how they effect tenets who struggle just to pay rent. Milwaukee was (and most likely still is) a racially divided city in many ways with people choosing to stay around people of their own ethnicity rather than look for places to stay in other parts of town. Sometimes this is due to a racist attitude, other times the landlords find reasons to not rent to them to keep the 'Status Quo' in place. 

Most people fell into 3 main categories so I will cover them. Landlords is the first and easiest to see. Two different landlords are heavily focused on in this book. One owns many inner city apartments and houses which could easily be considered slums. The other own a trailer park. Both find evictions common place. For some tenants they allow certain people to get behind on rent, for others they file for eviction simply because they are more trouble then they are worth. Landlords are in it for the money as this book describes, and when that runs out they have no problem filling their spot with someone else who is willing to pay. They are however human and their empathy is shown throughout this book. 

The second category is middle class people who have fallen on hard times. Usually drugs are involved with this. When all you are focused on is getting your next fix, other things like making sure you have enough to cover your rent become secondary. However, these people know the life they could have. Often times, if they truly have the desire to clean up their act, their family will rally around them and help lift them back up with either a place to stay, money for rehab, or various other types of support. Helping someone back on their feet is easier than helping someone who never had solid footing to begin with. 

Finally there are the people who have always lived below the poverty line. Sometimes drugs are involved, sometimes it's having to take care of multiple children, almost always it involves living off of government assistance because either they need to take care of their children, or they cannot hold down a job. Many of these people have never finished high school and are limited to minimum wage level jobs, which are rarely full time. But even when the jobs are, they will end up spending a large portion of their checks on simply keeping a leaking roof over their heads. One unexpected expense or angry call to the landlord and their whole world can come collapsing down around them. Their families are in the same situation as they are and often cannot or will not lend a helping hand as they themselves are trying to keep their head above water. Some go to churches, job assistance, food banks, and more for help. But the sheer volume of people who need help from the crushing weight of poverty, these places are no more than a  single row boat out to a sinking cruise ship. 

The cost of being poor is shown throughout this book. Being evicted and not having enough money for a moving truck. Not having enough money to get your belongings out of storage. Government assistance letters being sent to the wrong house, and therefore your help being cut off. New down payments, motels, new furniture, food etc. While people of all race's deal with these hardships an improportionate amount of them are black. This book is eye opening to an epidemic happening in our country that many of us do not see simply because we are looking the other way.  

So relish the roof over your head, the food in your fridge, and the screen on which you're reading this. 

and remember dear reader, Stay Vivid.