Evicted by Matthew Desmond

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

by 

Matthew Desmond

This book is really good and it explains so much about Evictions and why they are happening at an alarming rate to our cities poor population. My brother and his girlfriend are being evicted in one month (they are evicting the whole building full of low-income residents who suffer from addiction and mental and physical disabilities to do repairs) He has lived there for over 10 years and has built a family with the other long term residents and they help and care for each other. His girlfriend has attempted suicide twice since learning of their eviction and potential homelessness and feels she needs to put down her cats since they won't be able to live on the street with her. It's heartbreaking. It's very difficult to find affordable housing in the Twin Cities area. Being evicted creates a lot of stress. Even I'm feeling the effects of the upcoming eviction and I'm not being evicted. It's so hard. This is an issue we need to create solutions for. As a teacher, I see some of my students struggling with eviction and homelessness and this changes their perceptions of worth. Read this book and educate yourself about this issue. It's so important to lower the rate of evictions in our cities, that it needs to happen NOW.

“Every condition exists,” Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote, “simply because someone profits by its existence. This economic exploitation is crystallized in the slum.” Exploitation. Now, there’s a word that has been scrubbed out of the poverty debate.”

“it is hard to argue that housing is not a fundamental human need. Decent, affordable housing should be a basic right for everybody in this country. The reason is simple: without stable shelter, everything else falls apart.”