Evicted is a book that's been on my list forever. Like since it came out. I am only just now getting around to reading it because I started volunteering with the Legal Aid project Eviction Free Milwaukee and people mentioned the book. So I realized I had to read THE book about evictions, which is set in Milwaukee. I can see the reason for the book's success. Desmond doesn't just write a book about eviction; he tells the stories of people involved in landlord/tenant issues as if a novel and explains the phenomenon of eviction through their stories.
So throughout the book, you get lots of narrative, and then a fact like this: "Since 1970, the number of people primarily employed as property managers has more than quadrupled. As more landlords began buying more property and thinking of themselves as landlords (instead of people who happened to own the unit downstairs), professional associations proliferated, and with them support services, accreditations, training materials, and financial instruments." Desmond also makes important observations, like when he echoes Jane Jacobs that, "A single eviction could destabilize multiple city blocks, not only the block from which a family was evicted but also the block to which it was begrudgingly located." These places become perpetual slums with high turnover, preventing people from forming any sort of community. And Desmond's use of a family as an example is not accidental. Families and single mothers get evicted more often. Having kids makes eviction more likely because kids become expenses and do things that get their parents in trouble with the landlord. Families suffer additionally in the screening process. Landlords of course screen for a criminal record, but also screen for evictions. This means that criminals and people with evictions get forced to live together in worse places. And since the evicted are more likely to have kids, those kids end up having to live around criminals at a disproportionate rate.
And it's not easy to move. Desmond points out that while the differences in quality of housing that exist are dramatic, the price differences are not so great. When he did his ethnographic study, median rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Milwaukee was $600, with ten percent of units below $480 and ten percent above $750. So just $270 monthly was separating the cheapest and most expensive units in the city, meaning that those in the worst units were overpaying while those in the best underpaid. So in the poorest neighborhoods, where at least 40% of families were below the poverty line, they only paid $50 less than the citywide median. But living in the worst apartments is much worse. At the time of the study, one in five renters in Milwaukee had a broken window, a busted appliance, or pests for more than three days. One third had clogged plumbing of over a day and one in ten spent a day without heat-- but average rent was almost the same as the good rentals.
Over 70% of tenants summoned to Milwaukee's eviction court did not attend (when the book was published). In some places it is as high as 90%. Of tenants in eviction court, the majority spent over half their income on rent payments and a third spent 80% of their income that way. Of those who are evicted, only one in six have a place to stay. Three in four people in Milwaukee eviction court were black, and three in four of that group were women, The total number of black women in eviction court exceeded that of all other groups combined. In Milwaukee's poorest black neighborhoods, one female renter in seventeen was evicted through the court system every year, twice as often as men in those neighborhoods and nine times as often as women from the poorest white areas. Women from black neighborhoods made up 9% of Milwaukee's population and 30% of its evicted tenants. It is additionally hard for women because they usually can't avoid eviction by laying concrete, patching roofs, or painting rooms. Men will usually approach their landlord with such an offer, but women are usually unable for reasons of physical strength sometimes, childcare obligations, or other work obligations. The more common thing for women to trade was sex for rent. The recession exacerbated the racial inequalities in Milwaukee further: between 2007 and 2010, the average white family experienced an 11% drop in wealth, while the average black family lost 31% and the average Hispanic family 44%. The racial discrimination also came through in this book. The author himself did a blind test and ended up reporting a landlord, and Desmond also mentions how a white couple with felony convictions, an outstanding warrant, five daughters, and past evictions were able to get a place much quicker than two black women without nearly as much baggage.
I also learned in this book about "nuisance abatement." These are policies that fine property owners if they are responsible for a certain number of 911 calls in a period of time. This means that they best way to avoid a fine is to evict a problem tenant-- who might be an abused woman or a family with children who have special needs. Also in the category of misplaced incentives are aid policies that sought to limit "kin dependence" by giving mothers who lived alone a larger stipend than those who lived with relatives. These have helped to break up families since people could get more money by living at different addresses. Another one is that a Social Security recipient can only get their SSI if they have less than $2,000 in the bank, which is an obvious disincentive to saving.
What stuck out to me in this book, perhaps because of the flareup in the Israel-Palestine conflict right now, was how similar eviction is to deportation or other forced movements. While a genocide may use deportation as part of a catastrophic, ethnically-driven "movement" to make room for some people where others were not welcome, eviction is a continuous "movement" of undesirable people based on their poverty. And it is similarly disruptive to use the power of the state to drive people out of their homes on a continuous basis. Of course, it is this guarantee of state enforcement of private property rights that allows for so many homes to be used by those who need them, but I think now that the problem of enforcement has been solved, it is time to look at how to promote people staying in one place, or at least living where they want to live. It is unproductive to shuffle the poorest people in a city around constantly.
Finally, Desmond proposes a system of housing vouchers to solve the problem of evictions. I found it unconvincing however. He proposes that every family below a certain income level be eligible for a voucher to live anywhere they want so long as they paid 30% of their income to housing costs. But this seems unviable to me because it would have the effect of dramatically increasing the cost of housing since landlords would just raise rates by an amount proportionate to the increase in spending from the voucher. And it also creates more perverse incentives since people will want to rent places without much regard to cost with the government absorbing 70%. I think the fundamental problem is supply and stock. Giving people more money doesn't actually mean there will be more good places to live. Nowadays, people want to live with more space, and the population is larger. I think that a voucher program could work (Desmond mentions some European countries that use it), but if it's not paired with large increases to good housing stock in cities, it will be counterproductive.
Miscellaneous Facts:
- Milwaukee put a moratorium on gas disconnections, so even people who don't pay their bills will still get gas through April in the winter.
- Welfare stipends in Milwaukee have not kept up with inflation since 1997.
- Housing discrimination against children and families was finally outlawed in the 80s after it was discovered that only 1 in 4 rental units were available to families without restrictions. Despite this, housing discrimination against children and families continues.
- A one percent increase in portion of children in a neighborhood can be associated with a seven percent increase in evictions (as of 2010).
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