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An Invisible Crisis in Plain Sight: The Emergence of The 'The Eviction Economy,' Its Causes, and the Possibilities for Reform (Reviewing Desmond, EVICTED)

In the Evicted, Matthew Desmond explores the lives of landlords who evict and tenants who are evicted in poor neighborhoods of Milwaukee. While the book could be understood as simply an ethnography of a handful of landlords and their low-income tenants in one mid-sized American city, it is much more. Evicted, read in conjunction with Desmond’s prior scholarship, illustrates the emergence of what I call an Eviction Economy in our cities – an economy in which eviction of the poor is not exceptional, but rather the norm, part of landlords’ business models and poor people’s way of life. The greatest achievement of Evicted is that it makes this Eviction Economy, and the terrible human and societal toll it takes, visible to a broad audience. However, as much as it provides a compelling descriptive account of the Eviction Economy, Evicted is not fully persuasive in its explanation of the rise of the Eviction Economy. In particular, Desmond’s argument that the Eviction Economy is caused by landlords’ charging exploitative rents is conceptually and empirically problematic. As a response to the Evicted Economy, Desmond primarily calls for a robust universal voucher program, which would indeed address the lack of supply of affordable housing. But the political feasibility of such a program is questionable. Evicted does not address less sweeping reforms that could be both politically feasible and effective in limiting the scope and harmful effects of the Eviction Economy.