By Alison Emery
“[I]t 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.”
― Matthew Desmond
As I drove up I could see some clothing, a few toys, and some kitchen items strewn around in the yard. The sign on the door confirmed what I feared. A family I know had been evicted. Every day one young homeless student I worked with said, “Please read what is for breakfast and what is for lunch” as soon as he saw me. I was always ready to pull out the school menu and read it. Then I had to promise that he would get his meals. His concern about having his basic needs met kept his mind so busy it was hard for him to focus on anything else.
Recently, I remember a coworker’s face as she explained that she had been evicted on the East Side of Saint Paul because her landlord lost the house to the bank and now she was having trouble renting a new place. These are some of the personal experiences that shape my understanding of the words eviction and homelessness.
Matthew Desmond studies the customs of individual peoples and cultures, a field known as ethnography. Usually, an ethnographer gives a scientific description of their work. In Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City; however, Desmond used his interviews, data, and research to write an engaging book that reads like a novel about poverty, rental housing, and eviction in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Evicted compares and contrasts eight families who spend most of their money on rent and have fallen behind in paying it. Some of the people live in a trailer park.The rest of the families have the same landlord on the North Side of Milwaukee.Their family stories reveal the racial and economic neighborhood divisions in Milwaukee.The reader walks through the process of not having enough money to pay the rent, the process of eviction including going to court, being put out on the street, and the difficulties of house hunting after an eviction. The narrative reveals what the whole process does to the adults and the children emotionally and physically.
Desmond examines the roots of income disparity and why people of color are more likely to be renters. He weaves in explanations of the culture of the inner city and the culture of poverty to explain why the people he is writing about make the choices that they make.
He explains the class divides. These divides explain how we do not always see the reasons, necessity or motivation behind the decisions made on the “other side of the tracks.”
He contends that eviction shapes the lives of impoverished black women the way incarceration shapes the lives of impoverished black men. Desmond ends the book with an explanation of how housing vouchers work and how the system can be improved.
As I was reading I wondered about the 51 percent of the households in Saint Paul that are renters and how the high eviction rate in Ramsey County affects our city’s economy. I was left wondering how substandard housing, having parents who need to spend most of their income on rent, being evicted, and being homeless affects students and their education. After reading Evicted I have a better understanding of the relationship between income inequality, substandard housing, and eviction.
Alison works as a Special Education Teaching Assistant for Saint Paul Public Schools, and she is a member of Teamsters Local 320. Her BA degree in American Immigrant History and her belief in social justice have brought her to the East Side Freedom Library as a collaborator.