On Evicted by Matthew Desmond published in two thousand sixteen:
Are we evicting America’s lower class from homes, life, or both?
Matthew Desmond is a Sociologist who wanted to study poverty up-close. Having grown up in a small desert town on the Colorado Plateau, it’s not surprising that Desmond would be shocked by the ostentatious wealth of America’s upper classes. What is surprising is his drive to document first-hand experiences of poverty.
Desmond calls this process ethnography. He defines ethnography as, “…what you do when you try to understand people by allowing their lives to mold your own as fully and as genuinely as possible.” Basically, Desmond spent a lot of time empathizing and living life with people stuck in some of America’s more impoverished places. Then he wrote about it.
On page 246 of the paperback, Desmond lists six reasons for a rental company’s rejection of applicants. The criteria can be summarized as crime and homelessness. So, if crime and homeless disqualify you from renting a home, do they also disqualify you from a healthier life? And, if they do, what should be done about it? Is eviction “their problem” or “our problem”?
Sources:
Desmond, M. (2016). Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. Penguin Random House LLC, New York, New York.
Photo by Patrick Boyer on Pexels.com
Photo by Elena Blessing on Pexels.com
Photo by Ihor Lypnytskyi on Pexels.com
Photo by Alasdair Braxton on Pexels.com
Photo by Mairon Silveira on Pexels.com
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com
Photo by Taufiq Klinkenborg on Pexels.com
Photo by Chris John on Pexels.com
Photo by MART PRODUCTION on Pexels.com
Photo by Harun Tan on Pexels.com
Photo by Timur Weber on Pexels.com
Photo by MART PRODUCTION on Pexels.com
Deliberating Truth 