Olivia: In the city of Milwaukee, a landlord evicts roughly 40 people a day. That's about one family every hour and a half. But here's the real shocker: for many of them, that eviction isn't the end of their poverty story. It's the beginning. Jackson: Whoa. Forty a day? That’s an unbelievable number. It’s like an invisible, constant crisis happening right under our noses. Olivia: It is. And that staggering reality is the heart of Matthew Desmond's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. It completely reframes how we think about poverty. Jackson: And Desmond didn't just study this from an ivory tower. This is a Princeton sociologist who, for this research, actually moved into a trailer park and a rooming house in Milwaukee to see it all firsthand. He lived it. Olivia: He absolutely did. And that’s why the stories are so powerful. To understand this, we have to meet Arleen, a single mother with two young sons, Jori and Jafaris. Her story starts on a cold day, with a snowball.

Jackson: A snowball? How does a snowball lead to losing your home? Olivia: Well, her thirteen-year-old son, Jori, throws a snowball at a passing car. The driver gets enraged, follows him home, and kicks their apartment door down. The landlord sees the damage and decides it’s easier to evict Arleen and her kids than to fix the door. Jackson: Hold on. The landlord evicted them because a stranger broke the door? Not even something they did? Olivia: Exactly. And that’s the first domino. Arleen and her boys end up in a homeless shelter. She tries to soften the blow for her kids, telling them, "We’re staying at the Lodge tonight," as if it were a motel. From there, it's a desperate search. She finds a place, but it's quickly condemned by the city as "unfit for human habitation." Jackson: Unfit for human habitation. That's a phrase you never want to hear about your home. So what happens next? Olivia: She keeps searching. But now she has an eviction on her record. And Desmond shows that an eviction record is like a scarlet letter for renters. Landlords see it and immediately reject you. She’s calling dozens of places, getting turned down over and over. She’s forced to look at apartments in the most dangerous, dilapidated parts of the city—the only places that will even consider her. Jackson: So once you have an eviction on your record, you're basically blacklisted from any decent housing. It’s a permanent stain. Olivia: It is. And this is where Desmond’s core argument comes in. We think people are evicted because they're poor. But he shows that the eviction itself is what causes a deeper, more permanent poverty. Arleen ends up spending over 70, sometimes 80 percent of her meager welfare check on rent for a place that's falling apart. There’s nothing left for food, for clothes, for emergencies. The eviction forces her into a financial trap she can't escape. Jackson: And the stress of that must be just crushing. The constant instability, not knowing where you'll be next month. What does that do to a family? Olivia: It’s devastating. Desmond’s research found that mothers who get evicted show higher rates of depression. Their kids are more likely to have health problems and fall behind in school because they're constantly moving. Arleen’s story isn't just about losing a house; it's about losing stability, community, and even hope. Jackson: You know, the book was highly acclaimed, but it also points out this is a deeply racialized issue. Desmond found this happens more to Black women, right? Olivia: Overwhelmingly so. In Milwaukee's poorest neighborhoods, one in five Black women reported being evicted in their adult life. That’s compared to one in fifteen white women. Desmond makes this powerful comparison: if incarceration has come to define the lives of poor Black men, eviction has come to define the lives of poor Black women. They are locked up, while the women are locked out. Jackson: Locked up and locked out. Wow. That’s a chilling parallel. It's just heartbreaking. It makes you want to just blame the landlords. But you said the book is more complicated than that.

Olivia: It is, and that’s what makes the book so brilliant. It doesn't just show us the tenants; it takes us inside the business of the landlords. Let's meet Sherrena, one of the main landlords in the book. She’s a former fourth-grade teacher who now owns dozens of properties in Milwaukee's poorest neighborhoods. Jackson: Okay, so what's her story? Is she just a classic slumlord? Olivia: It's not that simple. Desmond follows her as she collects rent, deals with repairs, and files evictions. On one hand, she can show moments of empathy. When Arleen first moves in, Sherrena brings her groceries. She feels bad for another tenant, Lamar, who lost his legs and is behind on rent. But then you hear her say to her husband, "I guess I got to stop feeling sorry for these people because nobody is feeling sorry for me. Last time I checked, the mortgage company still wanted their money." Jackson: And she has that one line that just cuts right to the bone. Olivia: "Love don't pay the bills." That’s her mantra. And it reveals the core conflict. She has to run a business. But that business is built on the financial precarity of her tenants. Jackson: Okay, but come on. She's making a fortune off these people's misery. How is that not just pure exploitation? Desmond found she was collecting something like $20,000 a month in rent, right? Olivia: She was. And she had this other saying: "The ’hood is good. There’s a lot of money there." Desmond shows us the economic logic. In these neighborhoods, property is cheap, especially after the 2008 housing crash. But because there's such a desperate shortage of affordable housing, landlords can charge rents that are surprisingly high for the quality of the unit. They know that if one tenant can't pay, there are ten more waiting in line. Jackson: So it's a captive market. The tenants have nowhere else to go, so landlords can set the terms. Olivia: Precisely. And eviction becomes a routine business practice. It's not a last resort; it's a tool to maintain profitability. If a tenant asks for too many repairs or falls behind, it's often cheaper and easier to evict them and get a new tenant in, sometimes at a higher rent. Jackson: This is where some of the controversy around the book comes in, isn't it? Some critics argue that Desmond paints the landlords as too one-dimensionally greedy and that he downplays the real problems landlords face with tenants who damage property or don't pay. Olivia: That's a fair point to raise. The book definitely focuses more on the tenants' perspective. However, Desmond does show the challenges Sherrena faces—the constant repairs, the bounced checks, the stress. But what he ultimately reveals is that the system is structured to make her profit motive and her tenants' well-being a zero-sum game. The financial incentives almost always push her toward eviction, even when she feels a flicker of compassion. Jackson: It’s like the system itself is the villain. It pits them against each other. Olivia: Exactly. It’s a relationship where one person's profit is directly tied to another person's struggle to keep a roof over their head. And in that equation, the person with the property, with the power, almost always wins.

Jackson: So if it's not just bad tenants and it's not just evil landlords, what's the real problem here? Where does Desmond land on this? Olivia: He argues the problem is a system that treats a fundamental human need—housing—as just another commodity in a brutal market, with almost no safety net. In most of America, if you can't afford food, you can get food stamps. If you can't afford a doctor, there's Medicaid. But if you can't afford housing? You're on your own. Only about one in four families who qualify for housing assistance actually gets it. Jackson: One in four. That’s a massive gap. Olivia: It's a chasm. And Desmond argues that this is the core failure. His major policy proposal is a universal housing voucher program. The idea is that every low-income family would receive a voucher that allows them to pay no more than 30 percent of their income on housing. They could use it in the private market, which would solve the affordability crisis for tenants while still ensuring landlords get paid. Jackson: It sounds so simple, but it would be a radical shift in how we view housing. Not as a privilege, but as a right. Olivia: It would be. It would rebalance the scales, recognizing that a stable home is the foundation for everything else—for holding a job, for a child's education, for mental and physical health. Without it, everything else falls apart. Jackson: It makes you wonder, how many of our own assumptions about poverty are just completely wrong because we're not seeing this one, fundamental piece of the puzzle? We talk about jobs, education, crime... but maybe the first question should always be: do they have a safe place to call home? Olivia: Exactly. And that's a powerful question to sit with. The book forces you to see that a home isn't just four walls and a roof. It's the center of a life. And when you take that away, you're not just taking away a place; you're taking away a future. Jackson: We'd love to hear your thoughts on this. What surprised you most about the reality of eviction? Find us on our socials and let's talk about it. It’s a conversation we all need to be having. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.