Poverty And Profit In The American City Summary

Matthew Desmond’s Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City depicts a striking ethnographic portrait of the causes and consequences of housing insecurity among the urban poor. Drawing upon years of embedded fieldwork, Desmond, a Harvard sociologist, follows eight poor families, both black and white, in their harrowing searches for affordable housing. Desmond’s central thesis is that eviction “is a cause, not just a condition, of poverty (301).” Despite Desmond’s unconvincing solutions, unclear organization, and limited survey, his powerful method of vivid ethnography and vast research presents a compelling case for eviction as a root cause of urban poverty.
Desmond’s detailed ethnographic effectively illustrates his argument. His 20-month

Desmond details the power leverage landlords have over their tenants in their decisions such as renting, repairing, or evicting. While their tenants spend up to 80-90% of their income on rent, meaning “the rent eats first” (X), Sherrena vacations in the Caribbean and Tobin takes in over $400,000 a year, placing him in the top 1% of income-earners (176). Desmond’s ethnography reveals the complex web of laws, social relations, and market forces that structure the lives of both landlord and tenants, producing a system he labels as “exploitation” (306). Desmond argues that poverty persists “not for lack of resources” but due to extractive markets. As Sherrena likes to say, “the hood is good.” Desmond’s detailed ethnographic study of both tenants and landlords gives a 360-degree view of eviction, making his argument of “exploitation” more

This would have allowed for a more central argument which carries throughout the book. Some confusion emerges from Desmond’s writing style. By jumping between families in a staccato manner, it is difficult for the reader to discern between the multiple characters and the passing of time. The book would have further benefited if Desmond’s conclusions in the epilogue were dispersed throughout the narrative. This would have aided Desmond’s objective to address sociologists and policy-makers, as the organization of the book often appears as more of an oddly structured narrative than a well-researched