A review by jlib
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond

5.0

I feel like I understand the difficulties facing people who are struggling with finding and keeping a consistent place to live much better. Stable housing has a waterfall effect on every other aspect of life. When people ask "how do we attack the problem of poverty - it's so overwhelming" this book may offer a starting point from which all other problems can start to resolve themselves. The personal stories of real people and how housing affected their lives over the long-term was incredible, especially children. The stories of the landlords and their laser-focus on profit and how they exploit the impoverished was very enlightening. How laws in cities are so much in favor of these slumlords and how nuisance laws encourage tenants to keep quiet about problems of violence, and how calling the building inspector actually creates more evictions instead of protecting the tenant was also very eye-opening. I read this on audiobook and the reader, Dion Graham, was absolutely excellent.