PDF Summary:Evicted, by Matthew Desmond

Imagine living with the knowledge that you could lose your home at any time, for any reason. As sociologist Matthew Desmond explains in Evicted, millions of Americans live every day under the threat of eviction, and it takes a heavy toll on them both psychologically and financially.

This guide will start by explaining why Desmond believes evictions are out of control in the US today and his account of how that came about. We’ll then discuss how poverty and eviction each lead to the other, with predatory landlords and racial discrimination reinforcing that cycle. We’ll conclude with a few of Desmond’s ideas about how the US could empower its citizens to break that cycle permanently.

Our commentary will provide additional information about the history of poverty in the US and how it’s impacting people today. We’ll also examine the pros and cons of some potential solutions. Finally, we’ll present counterpoints to Desmond’s ideas from more fiscally conservative schools of thought, focusing on personal responsibility instead of systemic problems.

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Scrambling to find a new place to live is already difficult and stressful, but the author says that eviction creates problems well beyond that. First and foremost, people are likely to miss work or benefits appointments while searching for a new apartment. If they can’t find anything in the same area, they’ll probably lose their job entirely.

Second, people with evictions on their record have an even harder time finding someplace new to live, because most landlords will view them as an unacceptable risk. This drives them to seek housing with landlords who specialize in exploiting low-income renters—we’ll discuss these predatory landlords in the next section.

(Shortform note: Some people in this situation resort to living in motels, which are not suitable as long-term homes. Though they usually intend the motel to be a temporary solution, the cost of staying there can prevent low-income people from saving up enough money to rent a new apartment. One survey of families living in motels found that nearly half of them had been there for at least six months, and 10% had been there for more than two years.)

Desmond adds that desperate people may turn to stealing and other criminal activity to make ends meet. However, having a criminal record makes it even more difficult to find housing and work in the US, which further perpetuates this cycle. Therefore, many former prisoners have no choice but to go right back to crime after getting out of prison.

(Shortform note: The US justice system tends to focus on punishing people for their crimes, on the assumption that they won’t reoffend out of fear of further punishment. However, studies have shown that rehabilitation is more effective—and cheaper—than punishment-focused prison systems. When prisoners receive health care and mental health treatment, learn marketable skills, and have the opportunity for an education, they’re far less likely to reoffend after release. Researchers believe this is because rehabilitation addresses the reasons why people turn to crime in the first place; by giving people the skills and support they need to make a decent living, it eliminates the need to support themselves through crime.)

Psychological Impacts of the Poverty-Eviction Cycle

Desmond says that the cycle of poverty and eviction also causes serious harm to people’s mental and emotional well-being. In fact, eviction often leads to clinical depression and even suicide. There are several reasons for this.

First of all, not having a stable home is extremely stressful. Low-income renters live with the constant threat of losing their homes and possessions, which causes them a great deal of anxiety. Second, people who move frequently don’t get the chance to form strong bonds in their communities, which leaves them feeling isolated and vulnerable. These effects are especially pronounced in families with children, where parents have to worry about keeping their children clothed, fed, and in school on top of everything else.

(Shortform note: Enormous stress is likely inevitable for people living in the poverty-eviction cycle. So, if they can’t escape from the causes of their stress, how might they reduce the impact of that stress? Mayo Clinic suggests taking measures like regular exercise, a healthy diet, meditation, and connecting with others, all of which help reduce the harmful effects of stress on a person’s health and happiness. Some of those suggestions are difficult, if not impossible, for someone who’s using every resource they have—including time—just to stay alive, but even small steps can lead to big improvements. For instance, if someone in this situation can find just five minutes a day to relax and meditate, they might find themselves feeling significantly calmer and more in control of their life.)

The author also says that bad living conditions, such as squalid apartments and frequent moves, are extremely harmful to self-esteem. People who live in those conditions for a long time start to feel like they’re supposed to live that way. They come to believe that they shouldn’t have decent housing, for reasons that might range from personal shortcomings to the will of God.

(Shortform note: While Desmond says that people living in poverty come to believe that they’re supposed to be poor, another explanation is that they’ve simply given up hope. Many low-income people recognize that they’re trapped in the poverty cycle, and they see all the systemic obstacles preventing them from getting back out of it, so they resign themselves to living in poverty. Such people don’t necessarily believe that they’re supposed to be poor, but they understand that they are poor and that there’s very little they can do to change that.)

Predatory Landlords Prioritize Money Instead of People

Desmond says that predatory landlords are another major factor in the poverty and eviction cycle. Predatory landlords target low-income people and other vulnerable demographics, extract as much wealth as possible from them, then evict them once they start missing rent payments. Now that many people are landlords as their full-time job, these exploitative practices have become more common because professional landlords are seeking to maximize their profits.

To give some examples, predatory landlords often neglect needed repairs and maintenance because they want to spend as little money as possible. They’ll also frequently make verbal agreements with tenants who can’t pay rent, promising to accept only a portion of the rent or labor in exchange for the money they can’t pay—then, after getting what they can from the tenants, the landlords will evict them anyway.

(Shortform note: Desmond writes at length about the harm that predatory landlords can cause to low-income people, but he doesn’t discuss the ways that landlords help those same people by shouldering the costs and risks of owning property. People with low income are unlikely to be able to get mortgages to buy their own homes; furthermore, even if they could, having all of their assets tied up in a single property would leave them extremely vulnerable to market fluctuations.)

The author provides some background by explaining that the concept of a professional landlord is relatively new—in the past, most landlords were simply people who decided to make some additional money by renting out their unused property. The 2008 housing crisis accelerated the move toward professional landlording: People bought up foreclosed properties at a fraction of their value and turned them into rentals for low-income families.

(Shortform note: The trend toward professional landlording continued long after the 2008 financial crisis. In fact, the 2020s have seen a similar phenomenon of large companies and wealthy investors buying up as much property as possible and pricing many would-be homeowners out of the market in the process. This resurgence is due, at least in part, to the Covid-19 pandemic driving up demand for housing and home office space, which caused property values to rapidly increase.)

Landlords Hold All the Power

It may seem counterintuitive to target low-income people in order to make money, but Desmond explains that it works because low-income people are effectively trapped: Their only choices are to be exploited or to be homeless.

Predatory landlords take advantage of their tenants’ vulnerability by threatening them with eviction if they cause any trouble, such as arguing with the landlord or reporting code violations. The landlord might simply decide that the family is too disruptive and evict them.

Renters with higher incomes aren’t nearly as vulnerable to exploitative landlords, because they have the resources to leave and find better housing.

(Shortform note: Low-income renters aren’t the only people who are vulnerable to predatory landlords—for instance, undocumented immigrants face most, if not all, of the problems that Desmond describes. They’re especially vulnerable because, in addition to eviction, landlords can threaten undocumented people with deportation to keep them compliant.)

Finally, Desmond says that low-income renters often have little to no legal recourse against predatory landlords. Even if a renter can find a lawyer who’s willing to represent them for free, they can’t afford to take the time off from work to appear in court, so they have no opportunity to plead their case or defend themselves.

(Shortform note: Low-income people are also vulnerable to exploitation in the workplace, for the same reasons that they’re common targets for predatory landlords. A 2017 report from the Economic Policy Institute showed that millions of US workers were actually being paid less than minimum wage. Although that’s illegal, the workers were largely unable to fight against this wage theft because—like Desmond describes—they couldn't afford to risk their jobs or take time off to fight their employers in court.)

Discrimination Is Illegal, but Still Very Common

Poverty and eviction can happen to anyone, but Desmond says that minorities—especially Black people—are disproportionately affected by them.

The Civil Rights Act of 1968 made housing discrimination illegal, meaning that landlords couldn’t reject people on the basis of race or create racially segregated neighborhoods; it also prohibited discrimination based on sex, nationality, and religion. However, housing discrimination persists in numerous ways.

Desmond explains that although it became illegal to explicitly discriminate based on people’s demographics, landlords could accomplish the same thing using perfectly legal screening procedures. For a small fee, landlords can obtain a person’s criminal record, eviction history, credit score, and other information allowing them to decide whether that person is worth renting to. Because of the numerous disadvantages that Black people and other minorities face—which we’ll explain in more detail in the next section—these screening practices hurt minorities by locking them out of many opportunities that their white neighbors can take advantage of.

Furthermore, most of the same landlords who rejected low-income people also rejected people with criminal records, especially violent criminals. As a result, over decades and with landlords making countless such decisions, modern American cities became strongly segregated: Wealth and safety became concentrated in certain areas, poverty and violent crime in others.

Desmond adds that discrimination is a self-perpetuating problem. The people who are forced to live in poor neighborhoods have reduced access to education, healthcare, and other necessities. As a result, it’s unlikely that they or their children will ever be able to improve their situation—they’ll be stuck in the same low-wage jobs (or have no jobs at all), using every resource they have just to stay alive.

How Supposedly Objective Models Reinforce Discrimination

Desmond, intentionally or not, implies that deliberate racism is largely driving housing discrimination. While that was undoubtedly true in the past (as we’ll explain in the upcoming section) many people today make racially biased decisions while believing that race doesn’t play a role in their choices at all.

As data scientist Cathy O’Neil writes in Weapons of Math Destruction, even mathematical models and computer programs, which in theory are perfectly objective, can reinforce systemic biases. Because these models use historical data to predict future outcomes, they unintentionally discriminate against people from groups that have been disadvantaged in the past, such as minorities.

For instance, if a loan model is trained on data from an era of discriminatory housing practices, it could unfairly reject loan applications from Black applicants. Similarly, predictive policing models can unjustly target impoverished neighborhoods or minority communities because they use historical crime data, which may be influenced by past over-policing in these areas.

The History of Racial Discrimination

So far we’ve discussed how screening led to segregation between advantaged and disadvantaged people, but not the racial component of that process. Desmond explains that racism is built into the systems of landlording in the US, and he traces that racial discrimination from slavery in the 1800s up to the present day.

A (very) brief history of post-slavery discrimination in the US includes:

Sharecropping: When the slaves went free after the Civil War, they quickly found that white people still owned nearly all the land, and they had no choice but to go back to work for them as sharecroppers instead of slaves. Instead of payment, workers received a share of what they grew (hence the name sharecropper), giving them no means to leave and seek better opportunities elsewhere.

(Shortform note: President Lincoln foresaw some of the problems that newly freed Black people would face and intended to help them during the postwar Reconstruction period. In And There Was Light, historian and biographer Jon Meacham says that Lincoln’s assassination—less than a week after the end of the American Civil War—was a disaster for the former slaves because Lincoln never got the chance to put his plans for Reconstruction into effect. His successor, President Andrew Johnson, was only concerned with bringing the rebel states back into the Union as quickly as possible, so he allowed white supremacist practices like sharecropping to continue.)

The Great Migration: In the early 20th century, Black families moved in huge numbers to cities in the northern US. Since most of them had no money to buy their own homes, they had no choice but to allow landlords to pack them into dilapidated inner-city neighborhoods, which came to be called ghettos.

(Shortform note: In The Color of Law, historian Richard Rothstein makes a case that segregated neighborhoods like ghettos aren’t just a natural outcome of past disenfranchisement and poverty, but rather are a deliberate result of racist policies at the local, state, and federal levels. For example, in a 1952 court case, the Housing Authority of San Francisco acknowledged that it was intentionally creating segregated neighborhoods to keep Black people contained in certain areas of the city.)

The New Deal: US President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal (a comprehensive economic program enacted from 1933 to 1939) was hugely beneficial to white families, many of whom became homeowners for the first time ever, but Black families were largely left out of these federal programs. The government decided that ghettos were too risky for insured mortgages, and denied them; in other words, centuries of discrimination provided the justification for continued discrimination.

After that came the Civil Rights Act of 1968, the failures of which we’ve already discussed. Desmond sums this up by saying that even though the law now requires people to be treated equally, the history of inequality in the US means that Black people and other minorities are still at a significant disadvantage.

(Shortform note: In brief, Desmond is saying that equal treatment is not fair treatment in a system where some people are already disadvantaged. Race historian Ibram X. Kendi elaborates on this idea in his book How to Be an Antiracist. The crux of Kendi’s argument is that it’s not enough to create laws and policies that are merely non-racist (treating everyone equally, like the New Deal and the Civil Rights Act); for a country like the US to correct its past mistakes, it must embrace antiracist policies that actively work toward fixing the social and economic disadvantages that minorities face. For instance, an antiracist version of the New Deal might have required the government to accept the risk of insuring ghettos, or used federal resources to improve the ghettos so they could be insured safely.)

Epilogue: The Eviction Epidemic Can Be Cured

Having explained the causes and effects of widespread evictions, Desmond concludes by saying that this problem can be solved; that every US citizen can (and should) have a stable home. In fact, he says, simply expanding federal programs that already exist would go a long way toward accomplishing that goal.

Here are a few of Desmond’s suggestions:

1. Expand housing voucher programs and public housing. Rental assistance programs are the single most effective anti-poverty measure in the US today. Whether the government owns the property (public housing) or provides vouchers that cover part of a tenant’s rent to another landlord, these programs allow people to spend less than a third of their income on housing, freeing up the rest for food, medicine, and other necessities. However, these programs aren’t funded well enough to help everyone who needs them.

2. Establish rent controls. Part of the reason why existing voucher programs don’t help as many people as they could is that landlords overcharge voucher holders on rent, knowing that the government will pay the bill for them. Therefore, an expanded voucher program without corresponding rent controls would be very inefficient—in essence, it would mean using taxpayer money to boost landlords’ profits.

(Shortform note: Rent control is a controversial topic with arguments both in favor of and against it. Desmond has presented the central argument in favor of stricter rent controls: Such regulations would allow many more people to afford decent, stable housing for themselves and their families. The main argument against rent control is that it would reduce the number of rentals on the market, since many landlords would choose to sell off their properties or convert them into commercial spaces rather than continue renting under laws that limit their profits.)

3. Provide public funding for tenants in eviction court. Remember that a large part of why low-income renters allow themselves to be exploited is that they simply can’t afford to go to court and fight back. Federal funds to make up for missed work, childcare, and legal fees would help ensure that tenants can defend themselves against predatory landlords.

Finally, Desmond anticipates the argument that these programs would cost far too much to be feasible. He says that the net cost will probably be far lower than many people think because such programs will greatly reduce costs associated with homelessness, illness, and other effects of poverty.

Desmond adds that the federal government already spends far more than would be needed for a universal housing program but does so in the form of tax benefits for people who already have personal wealth and their own homes. Therefore, he says that the US government could solve the eviction and homelessness crises fairly easily; it just requires using federal funds to help the people who need it most.

The Multiplier Effect vs. Trickle-Down Economics

Desmond believes that the net cost of expanding welfare programs will be lower than people fear, but he may be understating his case: Such programs could actually boost the economy rather than harming it.

Many economists argue that giving the poorest people more resources creates a multiplier effect: When people spend the extra money they receive from the government, businesses experience increased demand for their products and services. As a result, they hire more employees and increase production to meet this rising demand. This, in turn, boosts household income and encourages even more consumer spending. The cycle continues, creating a ripple effect throughout the economy that increases output, employment, and economic growth. Desmond’s proposals would create this multiplier effect, either by directly putting more money into the hands of low-income people or by helping them with expenses, thereby freeing up more money for them to spend at businesses.

By contrast, giving tax breaks and other benefits to people who are already wealthy—commonly called “trickle-down economics”—has repeatedly failed to produce the economic gains its proponents have promised. Studies show that instead of creating new and better paying jobs, trickle-down economics only helps the wealthy to amass more wealth.