Evicted
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City is a 2016 non-fiction book by American author Matthew Desmond. Set in the poorest areas of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the book follows eight families struggling to pay rent to their landlords during the financial crisis of 2007–2008. Through a year of ethnographic fieldwork, Desmond's goal in the book is to highlight the issues of extreme poverty, affordable housing, and economic exploitation in the United States. Evicted was well-received and won multiple book awards such as the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. The Pulitzer committee selected the book "for a deeply researched exposé that showed how mass evictions after the 2008 economic crash were less a consequence than a cause of poverty."
Stats for nerds
21recommend
37mentions
24people
2016–2025years
89% recommend11% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- > 2) rarely is it the actual cost of the home that’s the problem
I disagree. With some exceptions, most people would rather be sheltered if they could just make rent, but they can't. Often it is mental health or substance abuse, other times it's rising rents and jobs that just don't pay enough even to get a room in a basic shared flat. Yes, housing may be cheap _somewhere_ but it may not be a place where people are able to actually live and support themselves.
While not directly about homelessness, I found Evicted (Matthew Desmond) a very eye opening book (at least for me, who only relatively recently moved to the US despite being a US citizen). There are so many people who are right on the edge that all it takes is one bad illness or other mishap to fall off, and once you're off it's really hard to get back on and stay on.
- That's what the book Evicted by Matthew Desmond taught me. People end up in these situations for a variety of reasons.
- You can leave DPRK the same way many leave PHL... In a body bag.
So my point still stands.
p.s. Try sounding less privileged and less in denial. It makes for better conversation.
Mike Desmond's "Evicted" and "Poverty" would probably help you as well.
- It might be. How can we say when all be get are "solutions" that deepen it, perpetuate it, normalize it, etc.?
So yeah, I'm glad we agree. Thanks for proving my point.
Hint: Start by reading Matt Desmond's "Evicted" and then go from there.
Also, watch the Rob Redford film "The Candidate". Make note of how many of "the issues" - and the associated narratives - persist today. Imagine selling a product that promises a solution but ultimately only keeps selling you promises.
- Desmond's "Evicted" was thorough and enlightening, at least for me.
- Possible factor? Perhaps. And if so, it would make a case that punishment is still a useful tool in modern society. There's nothing better.
But what if the most significant factor is modern society itself?
Prior to the pandemic we had:
- significant cronic poverty
- those a notch or two up live pay cheque to pay cheque with little or no job security, iffy health care, and so on
- the number of people and families in such peril continues to grow
- the article also mentions drugs (i.e., pain killers)[1]
- etc.
See Matthew Desmond's "Evicted" for more details.
Then on top of this sad social situation we added a gloom & doom pandemic? And thru that we were led by a virologist (not a sociologist).
Here's an appropriate example: Fauci did the commencement speech at Princeton Univ a couple months back. He received a standing ovation. Of course he did...the wealthy / elites had been otherwise spared of significant short and long term damage. But that small group is an exception, and certainly not the majority. Yet they continue to remain ignorant of the realities of the world outside their bubble.
Long to short, when are we going to look in the mirror and ask:
- What about collateral damage?
- We were at war (with Covid) and evey war has collateral damage, yet we refuse to look, to ask. Why is that?
[1] drugs aren't a factor, it's the courts?? That's absurd.
