Kicked to the Curb: How Eviction Can Make Poverty’s Impacts Even Worse
Matthew Desmond won the Pulitzer Prize in 2017 for “Evicted,” his devastating and densely researched narrative of those who profit from — and those whose lives are indelibly affected by — the business of forcefully removing residents from their homes for non-payment of rent, among other infractions. As Desmond, a professor of sociology now at Princeton University, explains, not all evictions even pass through the court system. Many are handled informally, as landlords tell tenants they’ve had enough and it’s time to go. Formal evictions create a paper trail, however, and on the research side give us a sense of how frequently this paperwork is filed, allowing us to compare parts of the country against one another.
Evictions can traumatize families, causing their situations to go from bad to worse across many indicators, from social and emotional health to becoming the last stage on a path to family homelessness. An eviction can prevent families from benefiting from public housing, and affect their credit rating for years, making future renting situations difficult — even if the eviction were for other reasons than falling behind in rent. The impacts can be so stressful that even years later, “families who experienced forced removal from housing report significantly higher levels of material hardship and depressive symptoms,”…
