Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

Eye opening, especially when read with Elizabeth Anderson's philosophy of a free and fair society. One of the most disturbing realizations, in addition to the injustice of eviction, appalling conditions in which landlords leave homes, discrimination against renting to families with children, and the mind-numbing number of catch-22s poor renters find themselves in, is that renters face eviction for calling the police. Arleen gets in trouble with her landlord for calling 911 when her son has an asthma attack. Crystal is evicted after calling the police to report domestic violence in a neighboring apartment. We are not fostering any sense of community, civic pride, or responsibility when people don't have safe homes and the stability to imagine more from their lives and demand more from their neighborhoods.

Desmond makes a strong case for housing as not only a human right, but one central to the American Dream. Too often, we find the poor “unworthy of help,” as Desmond says about Arleen - “You could only say ‘I'm sorry, I can't' so many times before you began to feel worthless, edging closer to a breaking point. So you protected yourself, in a reflexive way, by finding ways to say ‘No, I won't.' I cannot help you. So, I will find you unworthy of help.”