Book SummaryEvicted, by Matthew Desmond

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Evicted

Imagine living with the knowledge that you could lose your home at any time, for any reason, and have to find a new place to live at a moment’s notice. As 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. Evicted also explains the numerous ways that poverty and eviction reinforce each other, creating a cycle that traps people for life.

While researching Evicted, Desmond spent a year living in a Milwaukee trailer park and spoke with many low-income tenants living under the threat of eviction. He recorded their experiences, as well as his own, to provide unique insights into what it’s like to live in poverty under an exploitative landlord. Desmond won a Pulitzer Prize for Evicted (2016), and his next book Poverty, by America (2023)...

Evicted Summary The US Is Experiencing an Eviction Epidemic

Desmond begins by saying that evictions in the United States are more common now than they’ve ever been—not even the Great Depression saw eviction rates as high as today’s.

(Shortform note: On average, 3.9 million people in the US were evicted from their homes each year from 2007 to 2016. That number dropped sharply during the Covid-19 pandemic, thanks to a federal moratorium on evictions; however, by 2023, eviction rates nationwide had risen to match or surpass pre-pandemic levels.)

In this section, we’ll discuss two major causes of this eviction crisis: low wages and the loss of solidarity among renters.

Reason #1: Wages Don’t Match the Cost of Living

Desmond says one major reason evictions are so common now is that income hasn’t kept pace with the cost of living: **As rent, utilities, and other necessities have become more...

Evicted Summary Poverty and Evictions Create a Vicious Cycle

Naturally, poverty is a major cause of evictions—however, Desmond says that eviction also causes or worsens poverty. This happens because eviction disrupts people’s lives and finances, making things even more difficult for those who were already struggling. As a result, many low-income people find themselves trapped in a cycle of poverty and evictions that can be nearly impossible to break out of.

(Shortform note: Frequent evictions are just one way that, paradoxically, living in poverty can be very expensive. Discworld author Sir Terry Pratchett had one of his characters describe this phenomenon, somewhat humorously, as the Boots Theory of Socioeconomic Unfairness. In the book Men at Arms, a policeman named Sam Vimes explains that he doesn’t make enough money to afford good boots for his job, so he’s forced to buy cheap boots that wear out much more quickly. Expanding on that example, Vimes estimates that a poor person might spend twice as much on boots as a wealthy person does over the course of ten years—and the poor person would still frequently suffer from wet feet.)...

Evicted Summary 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...

Evicted Summary 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...

Evicted Summary 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...

Shortform Exercise: Reflect on the Eviction Epidemic and Possible Solutions

Now that you’ve read Desmond’s account of the causes and effects of eviction, examine your thoughts about evictions, the people who suffer from the poverty-eviction cycle, and how the US could solve this problem most effectively.

What, if anything, did you find particularly shocking about evictions in the US? For instance, maybe they’re much more common than you thought, or you didn’t realize how seriously eviction impacts people’s well-being.