Matthew Desmond's Collaborating Summary

For the past fifty years the shift from meeting the housing needs of the poor through government projects-based housing to a more individual approach, has been slowly implemented. Housing vouchers now enable underprivileged populations to move from high-poverty, segregated neighborhoods to more un-segregated, low-poverty neighborhoods. Low-poverty neighborhoods have less crime, better opportunities for employment, and more diverse schooling options. Some housing advocates however, contend that housing assistance is unnecessary and is an income subsidy that should be combined with other social safety nets (Clark, W. 2008).

Tommie Shelby is an American philosopher and a professor of African American studies at Harvard University. In his article “Justice, Deviance, and the Dark Ghetto” Shelby discusses poor, black neighborhoods that have persisted in America for decades due to few public policy efforts to make things better. In his article Shelby brings up two approaches to this dilemma that he opposes. The first is the personal responsibility approach which appeals to American values of hard work and ultimately places blame on the poor rather than the government or society. The Technocratic approach on the other hand does the opposite. It blames the government for failing to fix the social conditions of the poor and refuses to blame the poor themselves even if they have done actions that have not necessarily improved their well-being. Shelby’s approach is a mix between the two. He says that we cannot blame the poor if the injustice of our society has changed the content of their obligations and thus making their behavior reasonable due to the unfair conditions they were subjected to. In other words they are a product of their environment. Shelby wants to get his point across that the existence of ghettos today is evidence that our society impaired by structural injustices and that the ghetto is not only the problem of those living in it, but all of ours.

Those who cannot afford the high prices of housing are often forced out into the streets where they face a very uncertain future due to the number of abuses they encounter daily from all walks of life, with the most damning being the vagrancy laws that come into vogue in areas that are getting gentrified, which many cities have passed to “protect” their newfound assets and tax base from the “lowering” of property values. Furthermore, when cities such as Los Angeles demand that property developers set aside affordable housing for lower income people, they get sued in court, such as in 2009, when real estate developer Geoffrey Palmer successfully sued in order to overturned an ordnance which required that. This was also the same man who also proposed building a footbridge connecting two of his buildings to minimize contact with people he deemed undesirable (Davis).

“The home is the wellspring of personhood. It is where our identity takes root and blossoms, whereas children, we imagine, play, and question, and as adolescents, we retreat and try. As we grow older, we hope to settle into a place to raise a family or pursue work. When we try to understand ourselves, we often begin by considering the kind of home in which we were raised” (Desmond 2016, 293). Evictions! The root of poverty? Matthew Desmond’s novel “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in America City, portrays the lives of tenants, landlords, and house marketing on the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee. Desmond gives the reader overwhelming evidence and revealing testimony illustrating the major impact of inadequate housing on individuals, local, and national level. Desmond’s analysis and observation of his case study enables him to portray the reality of poverty, and to persuade the readers that evictions are a major consequence, and primary contributors in the relentless cycle of poverty. Desmond build his argument using two Aristotelian rhetorical appeals, ethos, logos and inductive reasoning to illustrates the importance of ending the cycle of poverty.

Poverty and inequality cripple America in every state and region of this country. These social problems overlap between social class and different cultures. As we read Evicted by Matthew Desmond, and Hillbilly Elegy, by J.D Vance, these problems were brought to the forefront in their own unique way. Evicted focused on the lower class level of urban poverty in the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The people that were highlighted in this book were struggling to make ends meet every month, and keep food on the table. Many of the families that we read about were evicted countless times, and struggled to stay out of local homeless shelters. Hillbilly Elegy focused more on the struggles of the working class, and how the people of

Given evidence of the effect of race on housing issues, even as it relates to home ownership, an exploration of the empirical evidence in how it manifests within rental markets is necessary. One of the leading researchers in the contemporary study of eviction is Matthew Desmond. In “Eviction and the Reproduction of Urban Poverty (2012), he combines statistical and ethnographic analyses to investigate the ramifications of eviction on the lives of the urban poor. The primary independent variable in this study was gender, while the dependent was eviction rates as a percentage. Half of his quantitative analysis involved extracting legal records or court-ordered evictions that took place in Milwaukee County between 2003 to 2007 (n=29,960) (“Eviction and the Reproduction” 91). Using addresses, eviction records were merged with population estimates of Milwaukee’s 880 block groups (“neighborhoods”), and yearly eviction rates for each block group were calculated by gender and pooled to calculate annual averages (Eviction and Reproduction 94). Then risk ratios and differences were determined using 3 different samples: all groups with at least 1 male and female evictee, high poverty block groups where more than 40% of the population lived at or below 150% of the poverty line, and hyper-segregated neighborhoods where at least 85% of residents were same race/ethnicity (Eviction and Reproduction 94). While these measures provided reliable and exact measures of incidence and location,

Therefore, it should be talked about and understood, so that the people are not kept in the dark, especially when they have not experienced it for themselves. I believe that understanding and admitting that the issues are accurate becomes a first step to solve the problems. It is disheartening that many minority groups and protected groups fall trap to these practices. What’s worse is that there are evidences that realtors and lenders restrict housing options based on the families’ race or background. These families are facing overt limited choices for housing in a nation that boasts liberty and opportunities. Clearly, there is something that needs to be fixed in the institution or society itself. Despite there being evidences and mandates to suppress discrimination, these actions still continue for businesses and corporations are granted certain leeway. Not saying that they should be limited in their business endeavors, but certain (stricter) regulations can be put in place to check these realtors and lenders that are supposed to serve the people and aid them in attaining the basic necessity of having a shelter. However, greed and supposition take the front seat when it comes to providing a home. Moreover, people’s perceptions also have a strong role in the encouragement of unfair activities in the housing market. To me, this poses a conundrum that is harder to

It was a way to constraint African Americans to areas that were far away from those with status, class, and power. Segregation led to discrimination in economic opportunities, housing, and education. The black culture has suffered from the barriers that were placed through segregation. However, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 tried to limit some of the discrimination associated with segregation. It was discovered that even a “rising economic status had little or no effect on the level of segregation that blacks experience” (Massey and Denton 87). The authors imply that “black segregation would remain a universal high” (Massey and Denton 88). The problem with the continuing causes in Segregation is that even though the Fair Housing act was placed, many realtors still discriminate against blacks “through a series of ruses, lies, and deceptions, makes it hard for them to learn about, inspect, rent, or purchase homes in white neighborhoods” (Massey and Denton 97). Segregation and discrimination have a cumulative effect over time. Massey and Denton argued that the “act of discrimination may be small and subtle, together they have a powerful cumulative effect in lowering the probability of black entry into white neighborhood” (98). William Julius Wilson had

Housing codes in this country shape the way we live. They tell us everything from what is considered to be a bedroom, to how many people can live in one dwelling. Max Page and Ellen Pader looked at two different examples of the way the US’s housing policies have had a major impact on our society. Page examined the tearing down of the slums in New York City. The government claimed that the buildings were old and unsafe, and thus needed to be demolished. Pader looked at eviction of ethnic groups, particularly Latinos, from their homes in Chicago. The rational for the evictions was that there were too many people occupying one space. This was unhealthy, and thus whole families lost their homes. In both instances, the government in mandating

If incarceration had come to define the lives of men from impoverished black neighborhoods, eviction was shaping the lives of women. Poor black men were locked up. Poor black women were locked out”.2 Stability and housing, while considered to be separate aspects of one’s life, are deeply intertwined. Race has invariably played a role in financial stability and obtaining housing as it has impacted the distribution of housing through stringent eligibility requirements for tenancy and preferential selection on part of shelter-seekers.

114-116). The African Americans were even forced to pay more than the poor White Americans who lived in similar, if not the same, buildings (pg. 115). The inequality of this was outrageous. The African Americans were forced to live in these run-down buildings because of the color of their skin. To make matters worse, there would be multiple people living in these small houses.

According to the Florida Coalition for the Homeless, a factor that contributes to modern day homelessness in the United States is the lack of affordable rental housing for low-income households. Affordable housing is a social problem that should be addressed. Interning at Big Bend Homeless Coalition has opened my eyes to this problem. Many persons who are experiencing homelessness are in their situation because there aren’t many places who offer affordable housing. When you look at the facts it is impossible for a small family who has one parent who has a minimum wage job to survive comfortably. Minimum wage in Florida is at $8.10 an hour. Working 40 hours a week brings in $324 without taxes being taken out. Biweekly a person’s income is $648.

Another aspect of Desmond’s (2016)” research is based on the perspective of the slumlord culture that also exploits low-income people in the city of Milwaukee. A focus on the behaviors of local landlords also exposes the lack of social responsibility on the part of predatory property owners that only seek to extract money from the most impoverished sectors of society. Another aspect of the unregulated financial markets reveals the predatory nature of landlord policies, specially in the case of Tobin in Desmond’s (2016) sociological examination of real estate culture in urban Milwaukee. On one hand, Tobin would be lenient with renters in his trailer park when they were temporally unable to pay rent, but on the other hand, a lack of written contracts also defines the underhanded method of manipulation and control that he wielded over his renters. Much like the banking institution loan officers that never checked the credit background of a subprime loan recipient, so does Tobin ignore contractual and legal obligations when managing his tenants in the trailer park:

Due to the discriminatory housing policies of the 20th century, millions of white families were able to obtain high quality homes (and enjoy the additional wealth that homeownership generated) while blacks were denied equal access to that prosperity. While the Fair Housing Act of 1968 did eliminate the overt discriminatory practices of the U.S. housing market, it did not redistribute wealth or effectively desegregate black and white neighborhoods. Decades of white wealth accumulation occurred while blacks earned little to no wealth as renters or buyers in low income areas (1001 Lecture 16, Racism and Discrimination). Blacks also had access to fewer resources due to residential segregations redlining preventing investment in ethnic neighborhoods, meaning their opportunities to achieve social mobility were even further hindered by their environment. The legacies of residential segregation can most clearly be seen today in the form of social stratification, where whites have dominated all other races at the top of the social hierarchy, while blacks have been put on the bottom.

The notion/necessity of a home inside a globalized economy highlights the commodification of stability, in which it has become a privilege to be able to define and enjoy the luxury of having a place to rest one's head at night. Traditional, as well as modern conceptions of land and property are utilized as a mechanism of control and exploitation as a response to the historical and social legacies that have restricted access of accumulating wealth and property for women, poor people of color, as well as any identities outside the dominant white-male narrative. This mechanism of exclusion and control is ushering the fuel of an evolved form of colonialism, in which the housing market with the help of a repressive political system constructed this concept of ethnic genocide, thus highlighting the erasure of culture by displacing communities deriving from capitalist notions of progress. Progress inside the United States is viewed through modern development, such as high-rise apartment complexes and white-owned businesses profiting off the appropriation of culture, instead of ensuring progress for communities of colors is housing security. Displacement as form of social control, in which housing economy and policies are ushering a transformation of colonialism in relation to the housing crisis, in which poor communities of color are pushed into certain regions where they can be economically exploited, as well as socially scapegoated.