Scan barcode
A review by porshainielsen
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
5.0
This book should be required reading. The author write this novel like an ethnography, except it is not in the first person. Matt's epilogue and policy suggestions were so thoughtful, but that is because he spent time with all of the people in this novel. Matt lived in the trailer park with the tenants, he spent time with their kids, celebrated birthdays with them and truly learned what it meant to be evicted. The entire novel you may find yourself rooting for these people as if they are fictional characters, but they are not and it is not as if this book was written in the past.
Just some of my favorite, profound quotes, but I have literally over 50 annotations.
"They can be compassionate because it's not their only option", he said of liberals who didn't live in trailer parks."
"In 83% of cases, landlords who received a nuisance citation for domestic violence responded by either evicting the tenants or by threatening to evict them for future police calls. Sometimes, this meant evicting a couple, but most of the time landlords evicted women abused by men who did not live with them."
"The distance between grinding poverty and even stable poverty could be so vast that those at the bottom had little hope of climbing out, even if they pinched every penny. So they chose not to. Instead, they tried to survive in color, to season the suffering with pleasure. They would get a little high or have a drink or do a bit of gambling or acquire a television. They might buy lobster on food stamps."
Just some of my favorite, profound quotes, but I have literally over 50 annotations.
"They can be compassionate because it's not their only option", he said of liberals who didn't live in trailer parks."
"In 83% of cases, landlords who received a nuisance citation for domestic violence responded by either evicting the tenants or by threatening to evict them for future police calls. Sometimes, this meant evicting a couple, but most of the time landlords evicted women abused by men who did not live with them."
"The distance between grinding poverty and even stable poverty could be so vast that those at the bottom had little hope of climbing out, even if they pinched every penny. So they chose not to. Instead, they tried to survive in color, to season the suffering with pleasure. They would get a little high or have a drink or do a bit of gambling or acquire a television. They might buy lobster on food stamps."
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction and Racism