Evicted By Matthew Desmond Sparknotes

The last book that I read this summer was Evicted, by Matthew Desmond. The shines the light on the startling reality that fewer and fewer people are able to afford home ownership. Desmond writes, “Today, the majority of poor renting families in America spend over half of their income on housing, and at least one in four dedicates over 70 percent to paying the rent and keeping the lights on” (4). In the book, Desmond humanizes the eviction process and tells the story of 8 families from the eyes of the landlord and the tenant. Desmond shows the landlord’s thought process and how they are forced to survive relying on the payment of others, and Desmond shows the tenant’s struggle in order scrounge up enough money for rent whilen dealing with

In most cases their is one event that causes the families to become behind on rent and then evicted. For Lamar, he received two checks on mistakes and to fix the error the caseworker deducted the money from Lamar’s next check. This caused Lamar to play the game of catch up, even though it was impossible to catch up in the time to pay rent. However, Lamar still showed tenacity and did any work he could find from Sherrena, his landlord. For Pam, her car gave out in winter and because they didn't have enough money to repair the car, Pam was unable to get to her job. In the end, Pam lost her job and she fell behind on rent with her landlord Tobin. For the Hinkstons at their old house a shooting happening outside their home and a bullet ended up shattering the window of their front door. When the police arrived they took a look around and then decided to called Child Protective Services, who then called the DNS. In order for the landlord to not fix the damages he evicted the family because of their unpaid rent. For Patrice the manager at her job decided to cut back her hours and she wasn’t able to catch up after Sherrena served her the eviction notice. For Teddy and Scott they fallen behind when they were forced to get a neck X-ray and brain scan for Teddy, and then they just weren’t able to get catch-up on their rent. Lastly, Arleen was 870 dollars behind on her rent because of a funeral and a subsequent welfare sanction causing her to be evicted. The trend that shows is that their is one real life situation that causes each of the tenants to become behind on the rent. One event that is completely out of their control dictates whether or not they’re going to be able to have a roof over the head, and because each of the families use about 70% of their paycheck for housing when these events occur they’re don’t have any money left. In the end, Evicted shows the effect of some of these real life