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Matthew Desmond’s Evicted teaches one important message: perspective. Every character has their own perspective, their own situations, and their own aspirations, and Desmond’s Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is not a world of black and white, evil versus good, landlord versus tenant. He portrays landlords not as villains but as people with lives to live. In the other aisle, the tenants from amongst Milwaukee’s poorest are not vagrants but people in need of a place to call home. They have been crushed by life and now just seek a way to survive. Of course, neither side is pure. Landlords still need a profit, and for it, some turn to unscrupulous methods.
On the other hand, landlords’ worries are not always unfounded when it comes to tenants. Though rare, tenants can inflict horror stories upon landlords’ properties that become a nightmare to repair. These tenants scare landlords away from lenience, while vicious landlords stop tenants from working with landlords. The private rental market is in an ongoing crisis for America’s poorest. They can often not afford to pay rent, leading to evictions that quickly stack up, with each subsequent eviction making finding a new home harder. A compromise must be reached between tenants and landlords that defends both their interests; only then can a stable home be provided for millions in need.
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, by Matthew Desmond
The first aspect that must be considered in seeking compromise is power. For the impoverished, the private rental market is a game of the powerful profiting off the powerless. In this game, because poor tenants often fail to make rent, the landlords hold a stark advantage over their tenants. Failure to pay rent allows landlords to milk more money out of their tenants by not maintaining apartments or evicting them on a whim. Thus, many tenants are left to suffer in subpar housing because landlords do not find it worth investing in a tenant who cannot pay back the favor. The key to equalizing this power imbalance is making sure tenants can afford to pay their rent. To be able to pay rent makes tenants far more secure in their position when looking out for their own interests, since they can no longer be willfully evicted or have their living conditions neglected.
Bringing this into Desmond’s reality, Arleen serves as a prime example of the crisis that private rentals force impoverished renters into. She is held hostage by her past and poverty. Despite applying to 82 different apartments, she has been rejected by every single one due to either having children, the apartment being too expensive, her eviction history, or most unfortunately, racism. Laws need to be passed and support provided that would give extra benefits to tenants to ensure that they can find a home. However, landlords cannot be ignored either. Any type of law passed to help tenants cannot antagonize landlords. They have their own families to support and bills to pay. For example, Sherrena, who despite being a relatively large landlord, can still end a month with barely any money left in her account. Beyond all else, if landlords lose, everybody loses. Landlords provide homes for those who cannot or will not buy homes, and they comprise a massive portion of the private housing market. If landlords like Sherrena are pushed out of business, countless people lose their homes. Thus, the key to creating a stable rental market for landlords and tenants is not to shift power dramatically in favor of the tenant, but by granting sustainability to tenants’ financial situations while still allowing landlords to do business, keeping the market appealing for both parties.
And above economics, the societal and personal impacts that come with the housing crisis are what make it so important to solve. These impacts hurt countless families, and Arleen’s children, Jori and Jafaris, are prime studies. Because of their housing situation, Jori’s education is severely crippled. Because of how many moves the family had to make, he attended five different schools in one year. Meanwhile, Jafaris has learning disabilities, necessitating extra help which many schools in impoverished communities do not have the resources to handle. Constant migrations between schools strip students of a sense of belonging to their school, which also lowers their commitment to learning.
Because of their living situations, Jori and Jafaris face a similar future as their mother. They will likely fail to enter higher education and become just another turn in the cycle of poverty. Of course, this future is not guaranteed. With enough prudence, ambition, work, and good fortune, they could pull themselves out of poverty. But these chances are small, requiring maximization. The solution to this predicament ultimately rounds back once more to stable housing. With a stable home, Jori and Jafaris would be able to regularly attend school, gain a better education, and secure a better future for themselves. Beyond just education, a stable home contributes to all-around better living conditions. A sense of home provides benefits by upping stability in all parts of life such as work, relationships, and education. This sense of home extends beyond just the house and family; it covers an entire community. When people have lived in an area for a while, they become committed to that area’s well-being because it directly impacts their well-being.
As a result, these communities begin self-regulating, stopping crime and keeping people cooperative; this creates a better environment for everyone to live in. Evictions shatter this idyllic peace. They eliminate a sense of community by keeping the impoverished constantly on the move, preventing them from ever truly integrating into a neighborhood. This is all caused by ever-shifting market forces. As markets change, foreclosures occur, jobs are lost, and evictions happen, putting people constantly on the move. The key to providing a better life for the impoverished and a better atmosphere in impoverished communities is to ensure that people can find a home and stay there.
Lowering evictions is the key to improving countless lives, and government participation is key to this aim; however, current involvement is failing both sides. Section 8 housing, an ongoing government initiative to provide affordable housing, is a failure. Its administrative hassles dissuade landlords from participating in the program, causing the queue for vouchers to be incredibly long; waiting for a voucher can take years, which many families do not have. Desmond proposes a brilliant solution to this issue at the end of his book: a universal voucher system. All tenants beneath a certain income level would be assisted in paying rent, so only a predetermined portion of their monthly earnings go to rent, securing them a stable home. Landlords are required to participate, but their rent is guaranteed and without delay while also being spared from the inconveniences of the current system. This is only one of many possible ideas, but the necessities of a solution are universal: compromise. The only way that any solution can be created and implemented is if both tenants and landlords are brought to work with rather than against each other. Everything in life is about perspective, and the rental crisis is no exception; the needs of both the impoverished and the landlords must be understood before a solution can be found.
