Abstract
From the medical field to the housing market to the criminal justice system, poor people must navigate labyrinthian organizations that often perpetuate social and economic inequality. Arguably it is through these social institutions, and through multiple processes embedded within each of these institutions, that the governance of urban poverty is effectively maintained. This essay revolves around one such process, examining how Matthew Desmondʼs Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016) points to the eviction process as an important producer of urban poverty in and of itself. After delving into housing law and Desmondʼs ethnographic and quantitative research methodologies, the essay examines four sites where the law is at work in eviction: the eviction court; the “law-on-the-books” versus the “law-in-action”; practices in the shadow of the law; and the relationship between the criminal justice system and the housing market. One goal of the essay is to place eviction within the law, punishment, and social inequality literatures.
Highlights
Much has been written on the causes of urban poverty, but Matthew Desmond’s recent book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016) points us to an overlooked, yet severely consequential, factor: the process of eviction
Commendable in ambition and scope, the Act lacked a timetable and any sense of how the government would determine when the goal of a decent home would be recognized as “feasible.”. Another important aspirational statement was contained in Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act, commonly referred to as the Fair Housing Act of 1968 (FHA), which declared “it is the policy of the United States to provide, within constitutional limitations, for fair housing throughout the United States.”
A nationwide study commissioned by Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in 1980 found that only one in four rental units would be rented to families (Colten and Marans 1982)
Summary
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. From the medical field to the housing market to the criminal justice system, poor people must navigate labyrinthian organizations that often perpetuate social and economic inequality. It is through these social institutions, and through multiple processes embedded within each of these institutions, that the governance of urban poverty is effectively maintained. This essay revolves around one such process, examining how Matthew Desmond’s Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016) points to the eviction process as an important producer of urban poverty in and of itself. One goal of the essay is to place eviction within the law, punishment, and social inequality literatures
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