Poverty can easily lead to eviction, but eviction can also easily lead to poverty. Possibly the most fascinating portions of the book focus on how evictions and poverty feed off of each other, causing a domino-effect where one leads to the other in a seemingly never-ending spiral. While there is never a good time to be living in poverty, this time proved to be especially challenging, with rent and cost-of-living rising, and wages (or support) staying the same or disappearing. The book itself takes readers through life during the Great Recession, starting in 2008. This lends a nice balance to the book that allows the reader to gauge the entire sad situation as a whole. Desmond to demonize the landlords for performing the evictions, but he instead engages with them as well, to better shine a light on their side of the 'evicted' story. The book does not only examine eviction from the perspective of the evicted, but also of the landlords who are doing the evicting. Desmond spent time with all of the subjects that he profiles in his book, getting to know them, occasionally helping them, all while trying to understand the 'whys' of eviction. However, these past two years they have really focused on legal issues, featuring Just Mercy last year and Evicted, by Matthew Desmond, this year.Įvicted is not an easy read, and it was certainly not meant to be a breezy read. The Go Big Read program has always done an excellent job selecting challenging and thought-provoking books for the campus community to read. Please be aware that information provided may no longer be accurate, up-to-date, or relevant.

The content of this article is more than 5 years old.

Evicted by Matthew Desmond