Reddit reviews Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

Yeah, I don't know how to do it, but I don't think it's impossible.

One of the most bizarre discussions I had semi-recently was at a family gathering the same weekend as the Milwaukee riots where a very conservative relative recommended this book about inner city poverty as background for how bad it was there (despite the author being "a bit of a wacko socialist"), but then supporting the sheriff ordering a National Guard crackdown to preserve law and order (and he thinks Obama undermined the moral fabric of society by releasing some drug offenders).

This is not surprising to me. Section 8 vouchers initially seem like a good, non-distortionary, market-based way of providing low-income housing. But while that's true in theory in practice many U.S. municipalities, including Seattle, have restricted the development of any new housing to the point that Section 8 vouchers are impractical due to costs and simple apartment availability. Without doing something about NIMBYs and local zoning processes, Section 8 vouchers will not be effective.

Matthew Desmond's book Evicted is pretty good on this point (see my remarks here). I've written or worked on Section 8 proposals, as well HUD 811, 202, HOPE VI, and related programs; the people who run them, especially in high-cost cities like LA, SF, NYC, and Seattle are well aware of the problems that local zoning imposes on affordable housing. But most voters are homeowners and, despite what one sees people say in public, most like blocking development as a way of attempting to increase the value of their own homes.

As for links, I think one book absolutely everyone should read is this. Its called Evicted: Poverty and Profit in an American city. It looks at patterns of persistent poverty and eviction practices in Detroit. Its an absolutely crushing look into the daily lives of people caught in cycles of persistent poverty and can teach you a lot about how hard it is to get ahead, or even stay current on basic necessities in depressed areas, coming from a depressed background, with little education or ability for upwards momentum.

As for historical economic disparity, most of that is inference from documentaries and one particular lecture series called The Early Middle Ages which is an Open Yale Course available for free to the public. The professor is incredible and I listened to this whole thing in about a week. I'm not sure you will get as much out of it as I have, because I have a massive background in social theory.

To really understand how radically capitalism changed the power structure of the modern world, Marx is a great place to start. His communist theories are a bit whack, and a bit too black and white for me. But if you look at what was changing around that time in the world, and try and understand where Marx's ideas came from, you can start to understand the massive changes that capitalism and the industrial revolution had on the world.

Another interesting theory to take a look at is Weber's essay(s?) on bureaucracy, and his "Iron Cage." Which sums up how trapped and unimportant an individual or even group is/can be in todays world.

Okay, here I am channeling my inner Grady Harp. It isn't polished, I did it in about 6 minutes. It is on this book, which I do hope to read at some point: Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City


Matthew Desmond's critically acclaimed book, "Evicted," came with lofty expectations. First, several media sources have heavily praised and promoted Desmond's book even when he seemed almost reluctant to do so. Second, the heavy criticism that befell Alice Goffman's ethnography work has made readers skeptical of the style.


Desmond has met these expectations and perhaps gone beyond them. The book follows several families in abject poverty, including Arleen who is a single mother doing the best she can to raise her two children on $20 a month after paying for rent at an apartment that she would not choose but for pure desperation. "The rent was $550 a month, utilities not included," Desmond writes, "Arleen couldn't find a cheaper place, at least not one fit for human habitation, and most landlords wouldn't rent her a smaller one on account of her boys. The rent would take 88 percent of Arleen's $628-a-month welfare check."


The book also profiles the landlords who seemingly control the lives of their poor tenants. One landlady, Shereena, is benevolent at times while a shrewd businesswoman at others. "'I'm gonna have a hard time doing this,'" Shereena tells a handicapped man she must evict, "'I feel bad for the kids. Lamar's got them little boys in there.... And I love Lamar. But love don't pay the bills.'" Whether she takes advantage of the tenants or is their savior when they cannot find any other shelter is left for the reader to decide, as Desmond writes in an observational, naturalistic style. He seldom takes moral positions.


Landlords and banks are evicting tenants at a higher rate than ever before, and Desmond makes a compelling argument that this is a crisis that will significantly impact the lives of all Americans as it can lead to economic despair and even to crime. I enjoyed every single page of this book, which I read carefully and did not in any way do a quick Google search, look at the first few pages, and paraphrase the synopsis.

really-i-care March 6, 2016 ©

Edit: Ever important name and date.

It's a very well written piece by State Journal standards. The series it is part of on housing and homeless issues in Madison is better written and researched than normal for them.

UW-Madison's Go Big Read book for the 2016-17 academic year is Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City http://www.amazon.com/Evicted-Poverty-Profit-American-City/dp/0553447432?ie=UTF8&keywords=evicted%20poverty%20and%20profit%20in%20the%20american%20city&qid=1465487438&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1. The author is Matthew Desmond, who is now at Harvard, but got his PhD from UW-Madison. The book describes his experiences interacting with multiple landlords and tenants in Milwaukee around 2008 to 2010. He profiles an African-American area on the north side and a trailer park near the airport. It's a very enlightening and sobering read because all of the individuals involved are portrayed as very human.

This book is American but the same problems apply here, it's well worth a read.
https://www.amazon.com/Evicted-Poverty-Profit-American-City/dp/0553447432

Compelling book for those interested in what it is like to live, profit off of, and lose money from poor sections of our city:
https://www.amazon.com/Evicted-Poverty-Profit-American-City/dp/0553447432/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1484068855&sr=8-1&keywords=evicted

Yes. I barely own any possessions. I sleep on a mattress on the floor even though I work a good paying white collar job, and all of the furniture in the place is my roommate's.

I just don't feel comfortable with the 'permanence' of furniture.

Everything that I do buy has to be rationalized as being functional and it's something that I'll use everyday.

My NMom on the other hand goes absolutely batshit when she's extended just a little bit of credit, or inherits a little bit of money. I came home one time on holiday and stopped counting at 200 pairs of shoes. She had entire rooms of her house, which she inherited from her father, full to the brim with crap from ebay and gem stones. Then, she comes hat in hand when it's time to pay the property taxes at the end of the year and I have to hear about all the 'sacrifices I did for you!'

She doesn't have to work because she managed to get SSI for her fibromyalgia. She's very lucky that she owns her own house. I read Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City and know how bad of a situation it can be if you're on disability and are forced to rent. She on the other hand prioritizes shit from ebay over her property taxes and home owners insurance, and like clockwork I get a panicked call on December 31 how she needs me to send her thousands of dollars so she doesn't lose her house.

And I agree with the sentiment that these programs should be temporary things that encourage people to get back to work. My difference here is that I don't think, given the numerous stories of people living below the poverty line, that people staying poor because the programs they're on don't encourage them enough to try to lift themselves out is really a truly significant problem. If anything, right now the programs are so stingy and force people to jump through so many embarrassing hoops that it encourages bad decision-making. Additionally, there are many businesses (Payday lenders, etc.) that further punish people for being poor.

If you're interested in reading about these, the huffington post did a series called All Work, No Pay that encouraged those living just above the poverty line to share their stories. There's also a really good book on the subject called Evicted that does a good job of portraying what it's like to be poor in America.

Edit: Poor in America not American

The problem is that developers, who build apartments to make money, act according to where they see the demand. And where they see demand is in the international students who can pay $1300 for 258 sq. ft. Assuming those apartments get rented, then that is the price that the market will bear, and that is where the incentive is for new developers.

There are some market incentives to own pre-existing low-income or subprime housing, but not really incentives to build low-income or subprime housing, given that some of those incentives tend to lead to terrible outcomes that you tend to see in a lot of low-income housing situations. I could share horror stories on this note, some locally, some from bigger cities, though I'd instead direct you towards Matthew Desmond's heartbreaking but excellent book, Evicted, for a description of the broken incentive structure in sub-prime housing: https://www.amazon.com/Evicted-Poverty-Profit-American-City/dp/0553447432

Now look at the tools that local government has available to curb the problem. The obvious tool, rent control, is unavailable. There's some municipal control over occupancy permits and regulation in Title 16 of the Municipal Code, though licensing through Title 16 concerns maintaining certain levels of public safety and habitability. You have some redress at the county level through the courts, though Title 32 of the IC doesn't provide much protection for tenants, and it doesn't help that most of the tenants in town are part of a transient population that doesn't always vote in local elections.

Meaning that most of the control that local government has over the nature of the new housing that gets built is saying "Yes" or "No" when a private developer comes to the city requesting the construction and zoning approvals. Which puts local government in what I've described previously as a position of having to choose the least worst among bad choices- either we approve new housing, any housing, to try to meet demand in hopes of reaching a saturation point, or we don't approve the new housing.

And then, of course, when you do see proposals for low-income housing, you frequently see local people get up in arms about not wanting that housing built in their neighborhood. And if one were to graph a venn diagram of people who complain about rich foreign students driving up housing prices, who then complain about plans to build low-income housing for the homeless and other people shut out of affordable housing, I'd imagine that you'd be looking at more of a circle than an 8.

I just finished Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City and it was probably the greatest non-fiction book I've ever read! It made me want to get into politics. He really makes you care about the people in the story and my jaw dropped multiple times throughout.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X16300977

*Why the downvote? If you want to discuss gentrification then this study is required reading. He wrote a Pulitzer prize winning book about it: Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City if that's more your style.