Staff Reviews

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If you think you know what poverty is like, I urge you to read this book. Unless you grew up in poverty - and I don't mean working-class poor, I mean poverty - I guarantee you'll finish this book and realize you didn't know anything. Desmond expertly shows the excuses society gives for allowing poverty to continue - i.e., the belief that "those" people are lazy and don't want to work, that they’re drug addicts, or they like living off welfare - are utterly absurd. Welfare is not a free pass to an easy, work-free life. It is a denigrating subsistence eked out by desperate people with nothing else to fall back on, who end up living in residences most of us would rather burn down than set foot into because they have no other options. Desmond shows how even a single eviction can cause a spiral that makes finding decent, affordable housing almost impossible. Providing a feasible plan for how we could conquer eviction and the spiral of negative effects it causes, Evicted is a brutally honest look at just what it means to be poor in America.

— Em