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Summary Of Evicted: Poverty And Profit In The American City

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Matthew Desmond’s book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, reveals the dire reality of renting leading to evictions and poverty by telling the stories of multiple people. There are multiple issues within this topic that Desmond focuses on such as discrimination. Desmond tells the stories of people from different backgrounds, of different genders, and of different races. The book is all about poverty, human nature, human relationships, and human hopes. Due to the nature of this book, it is crucial that the events are examined through a socio-cultural lens. Regarding human hopes, the American Dream is also an important concept that can be recognized in this book despite not being mentioned outright. Matthew Desmond's Evicted: Poverty …show more content…

This is made evident by the examples he showcases and the landlord whose story he includes. Sherrena is the landlord that Desmond primarily focuses on by introducing her personal background and story as well as her thoughts, opinions, and actions. Sherrena owns multiple properties in mostly impoverished areas and therefore refers to herself as a “slumlord”. Sherrena is aware of her position of power, however, she chooses to focus on her own greed and ambition rather than caring for the well-being of her tenants. At first, readers believe Sherrena to be a charitable landlord because she gives Arleen groceries and helps pay for funeral expenses. “She knew the ghetto's value and how money could be made from a property that looked worthless to people who didn't know any better” (Desmond 10). Sherrena understands the severity of her actions as well as their consequences. She rents out dilapidated and squalid properties to low-income families with high rental prices. Despite knowing that these families live in poverty, she does not change the rental prices or give them any aid. This hierarchical relationship between landlords and tenants has the landlord come out on top because they are intentionally deceiving and taking advantage of their tenants whether that be by having unreasonably high rent prices, renting out houses in poor condition, or both. Writer Thrasymachus’ words about power and hierarchy describe the core cause of zoning, “Justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger” (qtd. in LaGreca). Sherrena ignores any requests for help or repairs in

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Evicted by Matthew Desmond is a novel that tells the stories of families struggling to pay the rent in the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In this book, just like Missoula, the stories are intertwined with each other. So far the stories have followed two landlords: Sherrena Tarver and Tobin Charney. Sheerena owns property all over the predominantly black north side of Milwaukee. She is strong and caring, but I think she is not fair to her tenants.

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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

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The poverty is so high already in the area, it is more likely to be called a ghetto. Still, this area waited the longest time to receive help. ” And who claimed him or her? Who grieved over 1 Dead in Attic and who buried 1 Dead in Attic?”(p.1,ll. 71-72)

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First Lamar started clearing out the basement to gain credit for his $260 rent debt. After spending a week in the basement if mildewed, Sherrena only credited Lamar $50. " Lamar though the basement job he had done for Sherrena and Quentin was worth $250," (26). To Lamar surprise this was job was worth less in Sherrena's eyes. Through her actions of exploitation, it's clear Sherrena loves to have control over a situation and gets a sense of satisfaction from under paying tenants.

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Poverty is difficult to fully understand without experiencing it directly. Sociologist Matthew Desmond attempts to provide a different perspective on this issue through the lens of those struggling with poverty. This ethnography covers the lives of eight families and many others living in the College Mobile Home Park, a poverty-stricken area in Milwaukee, one of the poorest cities in the U.S.; Desmond lived there for one year, diligently taking notes and recording the experiences of the people he encountered. In Evicted, Matthew Desmond describes the interconnectedness of housing and poverty and highlights the exploitation of the poor through the scope of eviction. Throughout the book, he describes the factors contributing to the cyclical nature

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Matthew Desmond’s Evicted takes a sociological approach to understanding the low-income housing system by following eight families as they struggle for residential stability. The novel also features two landlords of the families, giving the audience both sides and allowing them to make their own conclusions. Desmond goes to great lengths to make the story accessible to all classes and races, but it seems to especially resonate with people who can relate to the book’s subjects or who are liberals in sound socioeconomic standing. With this novel, Desmond hopes to highlight the fundamental structural and cultural problems in the evictions of poor families, while putting faces to the housing crisis. Through the lens of the social reproduction theory, Desmond argues in Evicted that evictions are not an effect of poverty, but rather, a cause of it.

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In the book How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis, Jacob describes in his book on the systems of tenants of housing had failed due to greed and neglecting wealthier people. Also he shows that a correlation between the high crime rate, drunkenness and reckless behavior from the poor and it also shows that they lack of owning a proper home. It mostly focuses on slum conditions of the lower East side of Manhattan, where many immigrants like Jews, Italians, Chinese, Germans, and Irish were packed in tenements. Many of them had no windows, no ventilation, and tried to prevent overcrowding, crime, diseases, filth and most of all poverty. He also exposes the kind of conditions poor people live in.

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Evicted #2 Sierra Traxler SOC 002: Contemporary Social Problems Professor Tony Juge June 11, 2024 The issues of factors like mental health and stable housing, in relation to poverty, are multifaceted problems that have significant impacts on the families depicted in Evicted by Matthew Desmond. This paper will also discuss how poverty is structured around ethnicity and age, and the variety of complex ways that these issues emerge and impact individuals, as well as entire communities. Poverty can both contribute to and exacerbate mental health issues, while mental health issues can pose a challenge to escaping cyclic poverty. One way in which poverty can impact mental health is through the stress and anxiety that often accompanies financial hardship.

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In the novel, Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng, the lives of the Richardson and Warren families are tracked. The Richardons are a well-off family who have lived in Shaker Heights for generations, while the Warrens are new to the neighborhood and have never kept a residence for more than a few months. Through this expert from chapter ten, the author describes Mrs. Richardson’s analysis of Mia to communicate the theme that people of different social classes often misjudge those they cannot relate to. In this passage, Ng uses imagery, repetition, details, and diction to portray Mrs. Richardson as a person who values moral superiority through her threatened attitude toward Mia.

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Both Jeremy Waldron's book, the Harman Hate Speech, and Matthew Desmond's analysis of the housing crisis in America talk about the harm in social hierarchies due to external factors such as poverty and bias. While Waldron's argument about assurance versus dignity in terms of preserving one's right to free speech emphasizes Americans' constitutional rights, Desmond's eviction is an in-depth portrayal of actual real-life American stories that the justice system has betrayed. Both Harms in Hate Speech and Evicted highlight the importance of injustice and the humanitarian need for survival when faced with the theme of just relationships and individuality. During part three of Desmond's eviction, the readers follow the story of Arlene and her two

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All her life she was so dependent on her parents and did not know a life outside of poverty. When she finally got her own apartment, she realized that this was a life she wanted to live. While she was in her Park Avenue apartment, she “started thinking about Mom and Dad. When they had moved into their squat - a fifteen-minute subway ride south and about half a dozen worlds away - it seemed as if they finally found the place where they belonged, and I wondered if I had done the same” (Walls 268). Although technically she did not own the apartment herself, she was living and paying for the apartment.

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Esperanza and her family are always moving because they do not have much money, but they finally moved into a house on Mango Street where they “Don’t have to pay rent to anybody, or share the yard with the people downstairs, or be careful not to make too much noise” (703). Although it sounded like a nice place, when a nun from her school saw where Esperanza lived, she said, “You live there?” (703). That made Esperanza feel like nothing and made her realize she needs a real house, one that is really nice. Esperanza wants to change her life and make the best of what she has.

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Asha would resonate heavily with that willingness to do anything. She turns to corruption and greed to further her own motivations, to get her and her daughter out of the slum. Asha doesn’t care if someone can barely afford to feed their family, except in a few circumstances money will had to change hands before she lifts a finger to help. Asha doesn’t actually care about the slum or its residents, just like the Sheikh doesn’t actually care about the Israelis or Jaafari. She wants the life she envisioned for herself and her daughter Manju to become a reality.

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Wealth is one of the factors why residential segregation is an increasing problem. Golash- Boza explains, “Residential segregation happened when different groups of people are sorted into discount neighborhoods” (271). It is because of housing segregation

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After this, Sofia is nearly being beaten to death and then dragged off to jail. As a black woman, white people, like the mayor, and his wife, assume that it’s a great honor to be a white lady’s housemaid. It is soul-crushing for Sofia to be defenseless and demoralized in public for refusing to place herself in a degrading position. As a result, the white mayor and police beat her in order to reassert their racial dominance. One can see by examining the actions of the mayor, that racism will be a result of the condemnation of society.

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