Here we are people, the third and final installment of my graduation series!
This month, we’ve taken a trip down memory lane and highlighted a few of my favorite and most influential and most self-reflective pieces I’ve written during my undergrad.
This week, I’m sharing with you the essay that inspired me to do this series. I wrote this essay at the end of my sophomore year while taking a Sociology class entitled Social Problems. The class was as difficult and upsetting as you’re probably picturing, but it also forced me to challenge my own biases and views on the world in a way I never had before.
My professor used an image from often that stuck with me – it’s a quote from David Wallace, as quoted in The New Yorker:
“There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?'”
Source: The New Yorker
This image speaks to our perceptions of the world, whether that be on race, on privilege, or pretty much any issue that we fight about on Facebook.
We should seek to see and acknowledge the water that we and other people live in with empathy in order to better understand where others are coming from.
Matthew Desmond’s Evicted does this. I”m attaching the summary here from Goodreads:
“In Evicted, Princeton sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Evicted transforms our understanding of poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving one of 21st-century America’s most devastating problems. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible.”
Source: Goodreads
Here is my essay on Evicted by Matthew Desmond. I hope it challenges you to see the water around you and around people who are different than you.
(sources cited using APA)
Eviction Beyond the Home
A stable, secure home is often taken for granted by many Americans who never think twice about coming to their residence after a long day of work and plopping onto a comfortable couch. In Matthew Desmond’s Evicted, he follows the lives of people who do not have the luxury of a safe, established place to call home. He describes the years he spent living side-by-side people who have been disregarded and forgotten as a result of prejudiced policies and a history of residential segregation.
While living in these marginalized spaces, Desmond meets two landlords, Sherrena and Tobin, who are both seeking to make a living and profit for themselves in the tumultuous housing market of Milwaukee. Tobin’s tenant Scott was a nurse before he became addicted to opioids and lost his job, eventually finding himself turning to heroine to feed his addiction. Couple Pam and Ned struggle to find a place for them and their five daughters, and Ned eventually leaves his Black wife and two Black daughters off of a lease just so they can live there. Sherrena’s tenants Arleen and Crystal are tossed out after calling the police over a domestic violence incident. The Hinkston’s crowd eight people into a two-bedroom apartment. These are just a few of the lives plagued by eviction and the hardships that come with it.
In Evicted, Matthew Desmond discusses the profound effects eviction has on the lives of people already experiencing severe poverty and hardship, even more so for people of color, and the ways it perpetuates poverty and a housing market that favors the landlords and leaves its tenants trapped.
As the name of Desmond’s novel would suggest, when someone is evicted, its effects are greater and more long term than the already-terrifying problem of having to find somewhere to stay that night. A significant portion of Evicted records the struggles of finding a new place to live after being forcefully removed.
In the novel, Crystal and her friend Vanetta are denied from 80+ rental properties due to their eviction and criminal records, because a clean record is a common prerequisite in the housing market (Desmond 2016). This makes it even more difficult for renters when evictions are everyday in poor neighborhoods, as Desmond notes that “1 in 9 occupied rental households in Cleveland, and 1 in 14 in Chicago, were summoned to eviction court” (Desmond 2016).
To put into further perspective, right around the corner from Texas A&M in Travis County, the Texas Tribune notes 12 families are evicted there every day on average (Texas Tribune 2018). Thus, the violent cycle continues and worsens as struggling tenants are evicted and subsequently given an eviction record, making it even more difficult to find adequate housing and try to improve their situation.
Practically speaking, evictions hurt the chances of from moving up and out of poverty and instead pushes them into more and more dangerous homes and neighborhoods.
As I was reading this novel, I often found myself grimacing at the filthy, disgusting, supposedly livable living conditions many of the tenants Matthew Desmond encountered lived in, yet this is another problem that eviction only perpetuates. Evicted tells the story of the Hinkston family living with a clogged bathtub, sink, and toilet that they are unable to force landlord Sherrena to fix due to the fact they are behind in rent, and it is easier and more cost efficient for Sherrena to just kick them out than to actually bring the property up to livable condition (Desmond 2016).
Desmond brings another central problem of eviction to light, and that is the constantly crumbling condition of many of the homes people in poverty are forced to occupy. Because they are already barely able to find a place to live and forced to spend the majority of their paycheck on their rent, tenants in poverty have little leverage or resources to fight for their homes. We also see instances throughout Evicted of tenants attempting to call outside government or community assistance to report inhumane living conditions, only to risk eviction from landlords over missed payments or other contract violations (Desmond 2016).
This broken and unequal relationship between tenant and landlord reflects the uneven class and wealth distribution existing in America today, with power and privilege in the hands of some and not others.
For landlords holding power and prestige over their impoverished tenants, they have little incentive or desire to change the system that brings them money. This is an example of opportunity holding, which occurs when people reject what will change a system that works for them, even if it harms others (Hernandez, Social Class Lecture). And so, the inequalities continue, housing conditions continue to deteriorate in neighborhoods with deep poverty, and the rich continue getting richer.
Because a majority of the people Matthew Desmond interviews for Evicted are African American, it is impossible to ignore the affect race has both on his novel and on eviction and renting in America. Dr. Hernandez points to residential segregation as one of the biggest issues African Americans face today (Hernandez, Race Lecture). The effects of a history of redlining and confining people of color into certain corners and blocks and neighborhoods of cities are evident.
Experts Margery Austin Turner and Karina Fortuny (2009) blame this history of discrimination and disenfranchisement for denying “high-poverty neighborhoods of essential services and resources.” Matthew Desmond points out that even today, despite laws against discriminating against color, many landlords have strict regulations against past evictions and criminal records. This is difficult for African Americans when 3 in 4 people in eviction court in Milwaukee are Black (Desmond 2016). As Desmond puts it, “equal treatment in an unequal society could still foster inequality” (Desmond 2016).
Furthermore, Black women “experience the highest instances of eviction” (Pattillo 2017). Desmond gives two possible reasons for this, the first being that women are often less likely to try to negotiate with their landlords and to instead choose “ducking and dodging”, and therefore are evicted more (Desmond 2016). Men, Black men specifically, are also disproportionately incarcerated, with an astonishing 1in 14 Black men in prison, compared to 1 out of every 106 white men (Kilgore 2015). African Americans are disproportionately sent to eviction court and to prison.
Matthew Desmond says it best, “Poor Black men were locked up. Poor Black women were locked out” (Desmond 2016).
I have described only a few of the pressing, serious issues with the private housing market Evicted addresses, but at the heart of them is the overarching problem of poverty, and of a lack of stability that a home provides. I began this paper with the fact that too many of us take having a home for granted. I currently live in the same place my parents took me home from the hospital to, and the presence of a constant, stationary geographic location provided me with countless privileges and advantages I did not see until I was much older.
Desmond states that residential stability results in psychological, educational, and economic stability (Desmond 2016). These are all things that people who are constantly battling eviction and struggling to find any sort of roof over their heads can only dream of, yet I never knew a life without. One of my favorite articles we read this semester by Matthew Stewart discusses the privileges the top 9.9% of Americans enjoy, calling them “the 5Gs” which stand for “good family, good health, good schools, good neighborhoods, and good jobs” (Stewart 2018). 3 out of 5 of these “Gs” are a direct result of a geographic location.
How can we expect impoverished people to succeed and move up when they do not have accessibility to these necessary ingredients to success? When people do not have a home, it makes every aspect of their already difficult lives seem even more impossible and unreachable.
Yet the root cause of all of these issues, the cause of evictions and denied rental applications and an unfair housing market and court system, is relatively simple. It is poverty. Everything else, including countless other problems beyond the scope discussed in Evicted, are direct results of poverty, and a society that favors certain people and races, and leaves others to fend for itself. Yes, America’s racist past contributes to the disproportionate number of people of color trapped in poverty, making the issue more than a simple, straight line of cause and effect, but every line in the tangled mess does point back to poverty.
A stereotype I held for many years regarding the poor was very similar to those which Dr. Hernandez discussed in class, that the poor are “lazy, stupid, and poor decision makers” (Hernandez, Class Lecture). If I have learned anything in this class, it is that poverty continually harms and puts down and ruins those in it. A concept known as the scarcity mentality is clear evidence of this, and examples and the effects of this way of thinking are seen throughout Matthew Desmond’s Evicted. Scarcity mentality refers to the way people think and act differently if they believe a thing to be scarce (Bregman 2017).
Desmond’s best example of this is a heart retching moment in the story when Vanetta is convicted of an armed robbery and he tells her story beautifully:
“What happened was…you and your children were about to be thrown out of your home, and you snatched someone’s purse as your friend pointed a gun at her face. And if it was poverty that caused this crime, who’s to say you won’t do it again? Because you were poor then and you are poor now. We all see the underlying cause, we see it every day in this court” (Desmond 2016).
Poverty forces those in it to be only able to look at how they will survive the next day, the next night, and the next few hours. Society wonders why the poor remain stuck where they are, making the same mistakes over and over and seemingly causing their own downfall, failing to empathize and understand most wouldn’t fare much better in their shoes.
This issue of lack of adequate housing in America for the poor is often overlooked and ignored as even really being an issue. Since the 1960s, housing has been the largest expense for the families on average (Pattillo 2017). In his epilogue, Matthew Desmond introduces the idea of housing moving from a privilege to a right with the institution of a housing voucher program, which would make every family below a certain income level eligible for a voucher (Desmond 2016).
In the context of healthcare, a study showed that meeting the basic need of housing can allow the poor to focus on finding better healthcare and meeting other basic needs (Simon et al. 2017). Think back to Vanetta and her armed robbery. She may not have committed the crime if she had not feared eviction. Housing vouchers can give people who feel trapped in the inescapable rabbit whole of poverty the small boost they need to get up and out. Poverty is the root of the problem, but Matthew Desmond points to housing as a solution.
I am not suggesting to give every impoverished family in America a free three-bedroom house with a white picket fence, but I am agreeing with the belief that housing is a fundamental need and should be treated like one.
Dr. Hernandez has said countless times that solving poverty would subsequently solve countless other problems in America, such as the criminal justice system, class inequality, and even environmental and occupational issues, just to name a few. The scarcity mentality as well as history have taught us that money alone cannot solve this issue.
This book and the solutions it gives are important because they stress the fact that not only is a portion of America perpetually plagued by poverty, but eviction, an issue that seems more like a side-effect than a catalyst, is a driving force behind it.
Solving the problem of scarcity is something people have been trying to since the beginning of humanity, and it is definitely not something that can be solved or erased overnight.
It requires more people like Matthew Desmond, standing on tables telling the stories of people lost in the shuffle.
It will take policy makers and politicians and us, citizens of America, listening.
I enjoyed this book because it did not pretend to have all of the answers, and it knew there isn’t an easy or universal solution. What this book did is give us a real, honest look at poverty. It forced me to imagine being in the shoes of its people, kicked out into the cold on Christmas with nowhere to go, or going back to the drugs because there simply isn’t another way. It brought poverty and eviction and all of the ugliness that comes with it to light.
Most of all, it made me realize how important it is to have a home, and how necessary it is that we fight for everyone else to have a place to call home too.
References
Bregman, Rutger. 2017. Poverty isn’t a lack of character; it’s a lack of cash.” Retrieved April 22, 2019. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydKcaIE6O1k&t=534s)
Desmond, Matthew. 2016. Evicted. New York City, Broadway Books.
Hernandez, Alexander Lectures.
Kilgore, James. 2015. “Mass Incarceration: Examining and Moving Beyond the New Jim Crow.” Critical Sociology 4(2):283-295 doi:
10.1177/0896920513509821
McGlinchy, Audrey. 2018. “Five days to vacate: How a sudden setback can lead to an eviction.” The Texas Tribune, Retrieved April 23, 2019. (https://www.texastribune.org/2018/10/10/eviction-travis-county/)
Simon, Alan E., Andrew Fenelon, Veronica Helms, Patricia C. Lloyd, and Lauren M. Rossen. 2017. “HUD Housing Assistance Associated With Lower Uninsurance Rates And Unmet Medical Need.” Health Affairs 36(6):1016-1023 doi:
10.1377/hlthaff.2016.1152
Stewart, Matthew. 2017. “The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy.” The Atlantic, Retrieved April 23, 2019. (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/)
Pattillo, Mary. 2017. “Housing: Commodity versus Right.” Annual Review of Sociology 39:509-531. doi: 10.1146/annurev-soc-071312-145611
Turner, Margery Austin and Karina Fortuny. 2009. “Residential Segregation and Low-Income Working Families” The Urban Institute, Washington, DC.