Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

Matthew Desmond 2016

Devastation Rating

Existential Dread
poverty housing America inequality

Our Take

Desmond embeds in Milwaukee's worst housing and follows eight families toward the eviction that will unravel everything. The landlords are not monsters — they are a system made flesh. Each court date is a small execution. The Pulitzer was deserved but also insufficient. This book should cause policy to change; instead it just changes the people who read it.

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