Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

Poverty could pile on; living it often meant steering through gnarled thickets of interconnected misfortunes and trying not to go crazy. There were moments of calm, but life on balance was facing one crisis after another.1

When Congress passed the Fair Housing Act in 1968, it did not consider families with children a protected class, allowing landlords to continue openly turning them away or evicting them. Some placed costly restrictions on large families, charging “children-damage deposits” in addition to standard rental fees. One Washington, DC, development require

Men often avoided eviction by laying concrete, patching roofs, or painting rooms for landlords. But women almost never approached their landlord with a similar offer.

When people began to view their neighborhood as brimming with deprivation and vice, full of “all sorts of shipwrecked humanity,” they lost confidence in its political capacity.8 Milwaukee renters who perceived higher levels of neighborhood trauma—believing that their neighbors had experienced incarceration, abuse, addiction, and other harrowing eve

Tenants who fell behind either had to accept unpleasant, degrading, and sometimes dangerous housing conditions or be evicted. But from a business point of view, this arrangement could be lucrative. The four-family property that included Doreen’s and Lamar’s apartments was Sherrena’s most profitable. Her second-most profitable property was Arleen’s

In the 1980s, Milwaukee was the epicenter of deindustrialization. In the 1990s, it would become “the epicenter of the antiwelfare crusade.” As President Clinton was fine-tuning his plan to “end welfare as we know it,” a conservative reformer by the name of Jason Turner was transforming Milwaukee into a policy experiment that captivated lawmakers ar

In Milwaukee, renters with housing vouchers were charged an average of $55 more each month, compared to unassisted renters who lived in similar apartments in similar neighborhoods. Overcharging voucher holders cost taxpayers an additional $3.6 million each year in Milwaukee alone—the equivalent of supplying 588 more needy families with housing assi

The persistence and brutality of American poverty can be disheartening, leaving us cynical about solutions. But as Scott and Patrice will tell you, a good home can serve as the sturdiest of footholds. When people have a place to live, they become better parents, workers, and citizens. If Arleen and Vanetta didn’t have to dedicate 70 or 80 percent o

Eviction can cause workers to lose their jobs. The likelihood of being laid off is roughly 15 percent higher for workers who have experienced an eviction. If housing instability leads to employment instability, it is because the stress and consuming nature of being forced from your home wreak havoc on people’s work performance.11 Often, evicted fam