Evicted Discussion Questions

According to Matthew Desmond in Evicted, what are the causes of poverty?

Poverty is often thought to be a result of not having enough money. A lack of good wages, not enough jobs, or poor spending choices are among the causes of poverty typically discussed. However, Desmond argues that the causes of poverty are far more complex. One cause, he says, is the often-exploitative relationship between landlords and tenants, in which tenants pay upwards of 75 percent of their income for rent and often fall behind on rent and other bills as a result. Once they are behind on rent, many tenants never catch up. Eviction follows, and the eviction leads to other repercussions, such as job loss, difficulty finding new housing, substandard housing, difficulty relocating, health problems, mental health problems, and difficulty in school, to name a few.

Another cause of poverty discussed in Evicted is the nation’s legacy of discriminatory policies and practices. Wealth inequality is part of the country’s roots in colonial times and legal enslavement that drove the US economy. Laws that were biased against Black Americans kept them from owning homes. Substandard housing and slums developed because laws protect the right of landlords to charge whatever rent the market will tolerate, and unfortunately, the market will tolerate higher rents when those in poverty make more money or are given government support.

Finally, Desmond argues a contributor to poverty is a lack of understanding of its true nature. Viewing the problem as a simple lack of funds brings about inefficient solutions because the more money the poor have, the more their landlords will charge. Viewing the problem as a moral failing of those in poverty—lack of money due to impulsive spending or a drug habit—makes people unwilling to try to solve it. Both perspectives leave persistent poverty in place because either solutions are ineffective or seen as enabling the moral failings of another. 

Why is poverty a trap, for whom, and set by whom?

As Desmond illustrates in Evicted, poverty is a trap because once a person is in it, they often cannot escape. An eviction or late payment to a creditor or utility company sets in motion a chain reaction in which a person finds it ever harder to find housing or a job. Evictions and nonpayment of bills show up on a person’s background check or credit report, and so they make new landlords or employers wary, and some landlords simply will not rent to someone with an eviction or bad credit. Those landlords that do rent to people with prior evictions often do so knowing that these tenants are easily exploited and are more willing to put up with run-down, unsafe homes just to have any kind of home.

This is a trap that is not set by any one person or even one group of people. Landlords have a share in creating the problem, Desmond says, because in their quest for profit they may exploit their tenants, who have little power over their situation. But Desmond asserts society bears some blame, for holding a set of values that elevates the making of profit over other societal values. And, he says, government bears some blame, for addressing the problem of poverty ineffectively so that programs meant to help the poor, such as housing vouchers and low-income housing, are either entirely ineffective or, worse, counterproductive—putting money into the hands of landlords instead of their poor tenants.

In general, Desmond concludes, poverty is profitable. When bills are paid late, they incur late fees. When a person’s credit is bad, they are charged high interest rates on loans. When a person is evicted, sometimes they have to pay a storage facility to store their personal belongings while they are unhoused. Late fees, interest, and storage fees line the pockets of both businesses and government.

What is the impact of eviction on women and people of color?

Women and people of color are disproportionately harmed by eviction. In “About This Project,” Desmond notes that women are twice as likely to be evicted as men. One reason is that women are more often than men primary caregivers for children. The presence of children increases the chance of being evicted, as they can be noisy or naughty—and sometimes that is enough to trigger an eviction. The opening scene of the book shows how one child’s naughtiness—throwing snowballs at cars—results in an eviction, not because of the snowballs but because one man overreacted to the child’s actions and broke the door of the apartment. Desmond says that children in a home make an eviction three times more likely.

Women are also harmed by policies that classify certain properties as nuisances, which brings a fine for the landlord. This nuisance classification can result from repeated 911 calls—for domestic abuse, for example. Women are more likely to be victims of domestic abuse than men, and if they or a neighbor call 911 out of concern for their safety, the property might be designated a nuisance property. This can trigger an eviction because landlords do not want to keep tenants who cause them to have to pay fines. The threat of eviction causes some women to refrain from reporting an abusive boyfriend.

Desmond also notes that over half of the evictions in Milwaukee during his research were in predominantly Black neighborhoods and that of the properties that qualify as “nuisance” properties, a higher percentage carry this designation in Black neighborhoods than white ones. This points to bias in the system. Discrimination by landlords also adds to the problem, Desmond says. The result is that Black women are far more likely to be affected by eviction than other groups.

In what ways is segregation a product of social design?

Milwaukee has been called “America’s most segregated city,” which people often perceive as a result of personal, individual actions. That is, they see people as self-sorting along racial lines by choosing which neighborhoods to live in and so forth, a process that results over time in segregation.

Desmond disagrees with this view. He makes the case that segregation is the result of racial discrimination in the housing industry. He traces the creation of slums to the 18th century, noting that laws allowing landlords to seize tenants’ possessions and rising rents flowed money to landlords and created conditions in which making repairs on slum housing was not necessary to keep the money flowing. White America was already accustomed to taking profit from Black exploitation, Desmond says, since this had been going on since the country’s earliest years in the form of widespread human enslavement. Even though legal enslavement ended after the Civil War, Reconstruction made only marginal progress in bringing economic independence to Black Americans, as many became sharecroppers whose labor still mostly profited white landowners. Then, during the Great Migration, when millions of Black Americans left the rural South for northern and western cities, Black people were crowded into these cities’ ghettos, becoming a captive market for wealthy slumlords. New Deal laws benefited white people and discriminated against Black people, as did the GI Bill, which helped white veterans buy homes but not Black ones. Predatory real estate companies in the 1950s sold homes to Black buyers at inflated prices, then foreclosed when they could not make the payments.

The upshot is that powerful people in society profit from the existence of a class of people living in permanent poverty, Desmond argues. Although there are people living in poverty of all races and ethnic groups, Desmond notes it is Black Americans who have historically made up the majority of this exploited class. Because this situation is profitable for those who already hold power and wealth, he says, it has persisted and been upheld by both the public and private sectors.

Desmond says that poverty is a relationship; what does he mean?

Desmond notes in “About This Project” that “[poverty] was a relationship . . . involving poor and rich people alike.” This is one of the driving ideas behind Desmond’s research, and it explains why he tells the stories not only of the tenants facing eviction but of their landlords. As he alternates among the perspectives of tenants and landlords, he shows how the rich benefit from the poor. The landlords he features, Tobin and Sherrena, make far, far more than their tenants. Their business is about making the most profit possible, and they can maximize their profit by charging the highest rents they can get away with and minimizing expenditures such as those for maintenance and repairs. Often the relationship between tenants and landlords expands into new realms. Landlords employ their tenants for very low wages or a small discount on rent so that they save money on labor and further increase their profit.

By focusing on poverty as the condition of not having money, solutions tend to involve getting more money to people through wage increases, government assistance, and tax credits. Desmond argues these solutions don’t always work as intended because they get the cause of the problem wrong. Viewing poverty as a relationship places the focus on this relationship when considering solutions to the problem. A more thorough understanding of the problem makes solutions more likely to be successful.