Evicted

by Matthew Desmond

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To the people I met in Milwaukee: thank you for everything. You invited me into your homes and work, taught me so much more than I could report here, and were patient, courageous, generous, and honest.

  My editor, Amanda Cook, read this book several times and provided thirty single-spaced pages of comments on earlier drafts. Thank you, Amanda, for your brilliant reads, broad vision, flat-out hard work, and most of all, for getting it. I’d also like to thank the rest of the team at Crown, including Molly Stern, for her commitment to serious nonfiction, and Emma Berry, for her careful eye.

  Jill Kneerim, my deep-thinking and resolute agent, worked closely with me to develop a proposal, a rigorous and clarifying ordeal. I owe Jill, and everyone at Kneerim and Williams, a huge debt of gratitude.

  I began this project while studying sociology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Mustafa Emirbayer, my dissertation advisor and total sociologist, spent untold hours reviewing my work and pushing me hard. Thank you, Mustafa, for teaching me so much about the craft. Robert Hauser supported this work in many ways, including by funding my final semester at Wisconsin. Ruth López Turley and Felix Elwert coached me in statistics and much more. Timothy Smeeding connected my ideas and findings to public policies. Chad Goldberg, Myra Marx Ferree, Douglas Maynard, and Pamela Oliver offered their time and guidance.

  The University of Wisconsin Survey Center helped me design and implement the Milwaukee Area Renters Study and the Milwaukee Eviction Court Study. I thank everyone at the Survey Center, especially Kerryann DiLoreto, Charlie Palit, Jessica Price, and John Stevenson, who went above and beyond the call of duty (and my budget).

  While writing this book, I have benefited enormously from my colleagues and students at Harvard. I would like to thank Bruce Western, for reading this manuscript in full and fundamentally shaping how I think about poverty and justice in America; Robert Sampson, for deepening my perspective on cities, crime, and the purpose of social science; William Julius Wilson, for setting the agenda and encouraging me every step of the way; Kathryn Edin, for trusted advice and contagious optimism; Christopher Jencks, for accepting zero easy answers; Devah Pager, for clarity of mind and generosity of spirit; Christopher Winship, for stimulating conversations about theory, methods, and making a difference; and Michèle Lamont, for stretching my understanding of inequality beyond these shores. I have also relied on insights from William Apgar, Mary Jo Bane, Jason Beckfield, Lawrence Bobo, Alexandra Killewald, Jane Mansbridge, Orlando Patterson, James Quane, Mario Small, and Mary Waters. Deborah De Laurell helped in countless ways, including by offering comments on the manuscript. Nancy Branco and Dotty Lukas aptly handled grant management. And a special thanks to a Brisbane taxi driver.

  I have worked with a number of incredible research assistants and collaborators on this project. I thank Weihua An, Monica Bell, Thomas Ferriss, Carl Gershenson, Rachel Tolbert Kimbro, Barbara Kiviat, Jonathan Mijs, Kristin Perkins, Tracey Shollenberger, Adam Travis, Nicol Valdez, Nate Wilmers, and Richelle Winkler. Jasmin Sandelson gave smart comments on the full manuscript.

  The Harvard Society of Fellows provided a warm and energetic intellectual environment, not to mention time to think and write. At the Society, I am especially indebted to Daniel Aaron, Lawrence David, Walter Gilbert, Joanna Guldi, Noah Feldman, Sarah Johnson, Kate Manne, Elaine Scarry, Amartya Sen, Maura Smyth, Rachel Stern, William Todd, Glen Weyl, Winnie Wong, and Nur Yalman. Kelly Katz and Diana Morse: thank you for your hospitality and for allowing me to finish this book in Green House.

  At Harvard Law School, Esme Caramello and the late (and heroic) David Grossman taught me about the promise and pitfalls of poverty law. Anne Harrington, John Durant, and everyone at Pforzheimer House provided my family and me with community.

  This project was supported in a major way by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, through its “How Housing Matters” initiative, as well as by the Ford Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the National Science Foundation, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy, the Institute for Research on Poverty, the William F. Milton Fund, the Joint Center for Housing Studies, Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.

  Barry Widera at Court Data Technologies helped me collect hundreds of thousands of eviction records. Jeffrey Blossom at Harvard’s Center for Geographic Analysis geo-coded huge data sets, merging them with population estimates. Chrissy Greer and Liza Karakashian accurately transcribed challenging ethnographic material. In Wisconsin, I also thank Tim Ballering, David Brittain, April Hartman, Michael Kienitz, Maudwella Kirkendoll, and Bradley Werginz for lending me their expertise.

  Gillian Brassil, my obsessive and tireless fact-checker, made this book better. Michael Carliner answered several questions about housing data and policy. Marion Fourcade hosted me at Sciences Po for a week, where I began to outline this book on large sheets of paper. For their intellectual guidance and support, I also thank Elijah Anderson, Javier Auyero, Jacob Avery, Vicki Been, Rogers Brubaker, Megan Comfort, Kyle Crowder, John Diedrich, Mitchell Duneier, Ingrid Gould Ellen, Russell Engler, Joseph “Piko” Ewoodzie Jr., Daniel Fetter, Gary Alan Fine, Herbert Gans, Phillip Goff, Mark Granovetter, Suzi Hall, Peter Hart-Brinson, Chester Hartman, Christopher Herbert, Neil Fligstein, Colin Jerolmack, Nikki Jones, Jack Katz, Shamus Khan, Eric Klinenberg, Issa Kohler-Hausmann, John Levi Martin, Kate McCoy, Alexandra Murphy, Tim Nelson, Amanda Pallais, Andrew Papachristos, Mary Pattillo, Victor Rios, Eva Rosen, Megan Sandel, Barbara Sard, Hilary Silver, Adam Slez, Diane Vaughan, Loïc Wacquant, Christopher Wildeman, Eva Williams, and Robb Willer.

  I thank the reviewers of this book as well as dozens of anonymous readers of related academic papers. I am grateful for having presented parts of this project at the following institutions, where I received helpful feedback: the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, American Sociological Association, Australian National University, Brandeis University, British Sociological Association, Brown University, Center for Housing Policy, Columbia University, Duke University, Harvard University, Harvard Business School, Harvard Law School, Harvard School of Public Health, the Housing Justice Network, King’s College London, London School of Economics, National Low Income Housing Coalition Legislative Forum, Marquette University, Max Planck–Sciences Po Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York Law School, New York University Law School, Northwestern University, Population Association of America, Purdue University, Rice University, Stanford University, the State University of New York at Buffalo, Université de Paris, University of Aarhus, University of Amsterdam, University of California at Berkeley and the Boalt Law School, University of California at Los Angeles, University of Chicago, University of Georgia, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, University of Queensland, University of Texas at Austin, University of Washington, University of Wisconsin at Madison, University of York, Urban Affairs Association, West Coast Poverty Center, Yale University, and the Yale Law School.

  This book is dedicated to my sister, Michelle, who continues to inspire me with her pure curiosity and heart for the poor. Thank you, Shavon, Nick, and Maegan Desmond, for your unceasing support and love. And thank you, Sterling and Walter, my lights, my joy.

  Tessa—what can I say? Thank you for anchoring me and empowering this work. You have been there in every moment, and I am overwhelmed with gratitude for your wisdom, sacrifice, and love. “Thy firmness makes my circle just / And makes me end where I begun.”*

  * * *

  * John Donne, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.”

  NOTES

  PROLOGUE: COLD CITY

  1. Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail (New York: Vintage, 1979), 53–55; St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (New York: Harcourt, Br
ace, and World, 1945), 85–86; Beryl Satter, Family Properties: How the Struggle over Race and Real Estate Transformed Chicago and Urban America (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009). Although nationally representative historical data on eviction do not exist, these historical accounts of the first half of the twentieth century depict evictions as rare and shocking events. Some local studies from the second half of the twentieth century, however, document nontrivial rates of involuntary displacement in American cities. See Peter Rossi, Why Families Move, 2nd ed. (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1980 [1955]); H. Lawrence Ross, “Reasons for Moves to and from a Central City Area,” Social Forces 40 (1962): 261–63.

  2. Rudy Kleysteuber, “Tenant Screening Thirty Years Later: A Statutory Proposal to Protect Public Records,” Yale Law Journal 116 (2006): 1344–88.

  3. These estimates draw on the American Housing Survey (AHS), 1991–2013. They are conservative, since they exclude renter households reporting no cash income as well as those reporting zero or negative income. The AHS records renting households that reported housing costs in excess of 100 percent of family income. For some households, this scenario reflects response error. For others, including those living off savings and those whose rent and utility bill actually is larger than their income, it does not. Analyses that have examined renter households reporting a housing cost burden in excess of 100 percent of their family income have found that only a minority of these households report receiving some assistance with rent (11 percent) or utilities (5 percent)—assistance which may be ongoing or take place on a single occasion. If you include households reporting a housing cost burden in excess of 100 percent of family income, you find that in 2013, 70 percent of poor renting families were dedicating half of their income to housing costs, and 53 percent were dedicating 70 percent or more of their income. If you exclude these households, you find that 51 percent of poor renting families were dedicating at least half of their income to housing costs, and almost one-quarter were dedicating over 70 percent of their income to it. The right number rests somewhere in the middle of these two point estimates, meaning that in 2013 between 50 and 70 percent of poor renting families spent half of their income on housing and between 25 and 50 percent spent at least 70 percent on it.

  The number of renter households dedicating less than 30 percent of family income to housing costs fell from 1.3 million in 1991 to 1.07 million in 2013, even as the total renter households grew by almost 6.3 million during that time. During those same years, the number of renter households dedicating 70 percent or more of their income to housing costs grew from 2.4 million to 4.7 million (if you include households reporting housing cost burden in excess of 100 percent of family income) or from 901,000 to 1.3 million (if you exclude those households).

  Housing costs include contract rent, utilities, property insurance, and mobile-home park fees. Here, income refers to the sum of all wages, salaries, benefits, and some in-kind aid (food stamps) for the householder, relatives living under the same roof, and a “primary individual” living in the same household but unrelated to the householder. When calculating housing burden, the AHS chose to use this income measure, called family income, over household income to “approximate whose income may be available for housing and other shared living expenses.” (The AHS poverty status definitions, however, are based on household income.) See Frederick Eggers and Fouad Moumen, Investigating Very High Rent Burdens Among Renters in the American Housing Survey (Washington, DC: US Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2010); Barry Steffen, Worst Case Housing Needs 2011: Report to Congress (Washington, DC: US Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2013).

  4. Milwaukee County Eviction Records, 2003–2007, and GeoLytics Population Estimates, 2003–2007; Milwaukee Area Renters Study, 2009–2011. For a detailed explanation of the methodology, see Matthew Desmond, “Eviction and the Reproduction of Urban Poverty,” American Journal of Sociology 118 (2012): 88–133; Matthew Desmond and Tracey Shollenberger, “Forced Displacement from Rental Housing: Prevalence and Neighborhood Consequences,” Demography, forthcoming. Throughout this book, I use custom design weights to facilitate estimates generalizable to Milwaukee’s rental population. All descriptive statistics that draw on the Milwaukee Area Renters Study are weighted.

  The American Housing Survey (AHS) collects data on the reasons renters relocated with the question, “What are the reasons you moved from your last residence?” and reports this information with respect to the most recent move of renters who moved within the previous year. According to the 2009 AHS (Table 4-11), among renters nationwide who had moved in the past year, between 2.1 and 5.5 percent were forced from their previous unit on account of private displacement (e.g., owner moved into unit, converted to condominium), government displacement (e.g., unit was found unfit for occupancy), or eviction. (The 2.1 percent estimate is based on renters’ reported “main reason for moving,” which is too limiting because those who were involuntarily displaced but listed another factor as their “main” reason for moving [e.g., poor housing conditions] would be excluded from this figure. The 5.5 percent estimate is based on all reasons given for moving, which may double-count some renters who report multiple kinds of forced moves. The most appropriate measure, therefore, is somewhere between the two point estimates.) According to the Milwaukee Area Renters Study (2009–2011), 10.8 percent of the most recent moves of renters who had moved within the previous year were forced. My estimate is larger—and more accurate—because MARS captured informal evictions. When informal evictions were excluded, my estimate drops to 3 percent, which aligns with the AHS estimate. The AHS, along with most material-hardship studies, significantly underestimates the prevalence of involuntary removal among renters by relying on open-ended questions that do not adequately capture informal evictions that many renters do not consider to be “evictions.”

  5. The national estimates about the proportion of poor renting families being unable to pay all of their rent and believing they soon would be evicted come from the American Housing Survey, 2013, Table S-08-RO, which also reported that over 2.8 million renting households in the US believed it was “very likely” or “somewhat likely” that they would be evicted within the next two months. Chester Hartman and David Robinson (“Evictions: The Hidden Housing Problem,” Housing Policy Debate 14 [2003]: 461–501, 461) estimate that the number of Americans evicted every year “is likely in the many millions.” See also Kathryn Edin and Laura Lein, Making Ends Meet: How Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low-Wage Work (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1997), 53.

  With respect to statewide eviction estimates: The Neighborhood Law Clinic at the University of Wisconsin Law School has begun to record state-level eviction filings. (Eviction filings [being called to eviction court] are different from eviction judgments [being ordered to move out by court order]. In all cities, there are more filings than judgments. My estimate of Milwaukee’s formal, court-ordered eviction rate is based on judgments, which is a much harder metric to obtain and validate in other cities.) In 2012, the numbers broke down like this: Alabama, 22,824 evictions filed in court (pop. 4.8 million); Minnesota, 22,165 evictions filed in court (pop. 5.4 million); Oregon, 23,452 evictions filed in court (pop. 3.9 million); Washington, 18,060 evictions filed in court (pop. 6.9 million); Wisconsin, 28,533 evictions filed in court (pop. 5.7 million). See the epilogue for eviction estimates in cities other than Milwaukee. On measuring involuntary displacement, see Desmond and Shollenberger, “Forced Displacement from Rental Housing”; Hartman and Robinson, “Evictions: The Hidden Housing Problem.”

  1. THE BUSINESS OF OWNING THE CITY

  1. The median annual household income among Milwaukee renters is $30,398, almost $5,500 lower than that of the city’s overall population. See Nicolas Retsinas and Eric Belsky, Revisiting Rental Housing (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press and the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies, 2008).

  2. Where you bought in the city depended on who you were, especially when it came to race. Milwa
ukee landlords were more likely than not to share their tenants’ racial or ethnic identity. Most white tenants in the city (87 percent) rented from white landlords; and most black tenants (51 percent) rented from black landlords. Overall, the majority of tenants in Milwaukee (63 percent) rented from a white landlord. But almost 1 in 5 rented from a black landlord, while almost 1 in 9 rented from a Hispanic landlord.

  Among Hispanic renters, roughly half rented from Hispanic landlords and half from white landlords, and 41 percent of Hispanic renters in Milwaukee believed their landlord was born outside the United States. Landlording had long been a way for immigrants to break into the American middle class. In the early twentieth century, Polish immigrants in Milwaukee took to jacking up their houses, building basement apartments, and renting them out. As the South Side of Milwaukee transitioned from Polish to Hispanic, immigrants from Mexico and Puerto Rico became the ones renting out those “Polish Flats.” See John Gurda, The Making of Milwaukee, 3rd ed. (Milwaukee: Milwaukee County Historical Society, 2008 [1999]), 173.

  Unlike in past decades, when the typical inner-city landlord was white, the deeper you went into the inner city, the more likely it became that your landlord was black: in neighborhoods where at least two-thirds of the residents were African American, 3 in 4 renters had a black landlord. On white landlords in black neighborhoods in past eras, see St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1945), 718.

  Most tenants in Milwaukee rented from a man. (Eighty-two percent of Milwaukee tenants reported renting from a single individual, as opposed to a couple, and 62 percent of those lone-wolf landlords were men.) Sherrena was bucking that trend. But when she stepped out of the car in front of Lamar’s house, as a black landlord meeting her black tenants, she was more norm than exception. Milwaukee Area Renters Study, 2009–2011.