Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, written by Matthew Desmond, a tenured sociology professor at Princeton University, was published in 2016 and won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 2017. In this influential work, Desmond highlights the interconnected issues of extreme poverty and affordable housing in the United States, themes he continues to explore in his more recent book, Poverty, by America. Through an ethnographic study, he follows the experiences of eight families living in some of Milwaukee’s poorest neighborhoods during the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath. The book reveals how eviction often acts as a cause of poverty rather than merely a consequence, challenging commonly held assumptions about this dynamic.

Summary

Desmond opens the book by describing two landlords: Sherrena Tarver and Tobin Charney, both of whom own rental properties worth millions of dollars. Tarver, a young Black woman and former elementary school teacher, is the focus of much of the book, while Charney—older, white, and taciturn—plays a lesser role. Both are driven by self-interest and show little empathy for their tenants.

Desmond then introduces a cast of Milwaukee tenants, documenting their experiences of poverty and eviction.