Matthew Desmond

In 2013, 1 percent of poor renters lived in rent-controlled units; 15 percent lived in public housing; and 17 percent received a government subsidy, mainly in the form of a rent-reducing voucher. The remaining 67 percent_2 of every 3 poor renting families__eceived no federal assistance. 32 This drastic shortfall in government support, coupled with rising rent and utility costs alongside stagnant incomes, is the reason why most poor renting families today spend most of their income on housing.

For almost a century, there has been broad consensus in America that families should spend no more than 30 percent of their income on housing. Until recently, most renting families met this goal. But times have changed__n Milwaukee and across America. Every year in this country, people are evicted from their homes not by the tens of thousands or even the hundreds of thousands but by the millions.

The year the police called Sherrena, Wisconsin saw more than one victim per week murdered by a current or former romantic partner or relative. 10 After the numbers were released, Milwaukee__ chief of police appeared on the local news and puzzled over the fact that many victims had never contacted the police for help. A nightly news reporter summed up the chief__ views: __e believes that if police were contacted more often, that victims would have the tools to prevent fatal situations from occurring in the future._ What the chief failed to realize, or failed to reveal, was that his department__ own rules presented battered women with a devil__ bargain: keep quiet and face abuse or call the police and face eviction.

It was an old tradition: landlords barring children from their properties. In the competitive postwar housing market of the late 1940s, landlords regularly turned away families with children and evicted tenants who got pregnant. This was evident in letters mothers wrote when applying for public housing. __t present,_ one wrote, __ am living in an unheated attic room with a one-year-old baby_ Everywhere I go the landlords don__ want children. I also have a ten-year-old boy_ I can__ keep him with me because the landlady objects to children. Is there any way that you can help me to get an unfurnished room, apartment, or even an old barn?_ I can__ go on living like this because I am on the verge of doing something desperate._ Another mother wrote, __y children are now sick and losing weight_ I have tried, begged, and pleaded for a place but [it__] always __oo late_ or __orry, no children.___ Another wrote, __he lady where I am rooming put two of my children out about three weeks ago and don__ want me to let them come back_ If I could get a garage I would take it.__hen Congress passed the Fair Housing Act in 1968, it did not consider families with children a protected class, allowing landlords to continue openly turning them away or evicting them.

In white neighborhoods, only 1 in 41 properties that could have received a nuisance citation actually did receive one. In black neighborhoods, 1 in 16 eligible properties received a citation. A woman reporting domestic violence was far more likely to land her landlord a nuisance citation if she lived in the inner city.In the vast majority of cases (83 percent), landlords who received a nuisance citation for domestic violence responded by either evicting the tenants or by threatening to evict them for future police calls. Sometimes, this meant evicting a couple, but most of the time landlords evicted women abused by men who did not live with them.

Urban landlords quickly realized that piles of money could be made by creating slums: __aximum profits came, not from providing first-class accommodations for those who could well afford them_ but from crowded slum accommodations, for those whose pennies were scarcer than the rich man__ pounds._ Beginning in the sixteenth century, slum housing would be reserved not only for outcasts, beggars, and thieves but for a large segment of the population.

No moral code or ethical principle, no piece of scripture or holy teaching, can be summoned to defend what we have allowed our country to become.

For many landlords, it was cheaper to deal with the expense of eviction than to maintain their properties; it was possible to skimp on maintenance if tenants were perpetually behind; and many poor tenants would be perpetually behind because their rent was too high.

The profits were staggering. In 1966, a Chicago landlord told a court that on a single property he had made $42,500 in rent but paid only $2,400 in maintenance. When accused of making excessive profits, the landlord simply replied, __hat__ why I bought the building.

Fewer and fewer families can afford a roof over their head. This is among the most urgent and pressing issues facing America today, and acknowledging the breadth and depth of the problem changes the way we look at poverty. For decades, we__e focused mainly on jobs, public assistance, parenting, and mass incarceration. No one can deny the importance of these issues, but something fundamental is missing. We have failed to fully appreciate how deeply housing is implicated in the creation of poverty. Not everyone living in a distressed neighborhood is associated with gang members, parole officers, employers, social workers, or pastors. But nearly all of them have a landlord.

The Hinkstons expected more of their landlord for the money they were paying her. Rent was their biggest expense by far, and they wanted a decent and functional home in return. They wanted things to be fixed when they broke. But if Sherrena wasn__ going to repair her own property, neither were they. The house failed the tenants, and the tenants failed the house.

But it was not enough simply to perceive injustice. Mass resistance was possible only when people believed they had the collective capacity to change things. For poor people, this required identifying with the oppressed, and counting yourself among them__hich was something most trailer park residents were absolutely unwilling to do.

In 1930, the death rate for Milwaukee__ blacks was nearly 60 percent higher than the citywide rate, due in large part to poor housing conditions.

But this house felt strange. Dave asked what was going on, and John explained that the name on the eviction order belonged to the mother of several of the children. She had died two months earlier, and the children had simply gone on living in the house, by themselves. As the movers swept through the rooms, Gray Eyes took charge, giving orders to the other children; the youngest was a boy of about eight or nine. Upstairs, the movers found ratty mattresses on the floor and empty liquor bottles displayed like trophies. In the damp basement, clothes were flung everywhere. The house and the yard were littered with trash. __isgusting,_ Tim said to the roaches scaling the kitchen wall. As the landlord changed the locks with a power drill and the movers pushed the contents of the house onto the wet curb, the children began to run around and laugh. When the move was done, the crew gathered by the trucks, instinctively stomping the ground to shake loose any stowaway roaches. Those who smoked reached for their packs. They didn__ know where the children would go, and they didn__ ask.

Our cities have become unaffordable to our poorest families, and this problem is leaving a deep and jagged scar on our next generation.

Most poor people in America were like Arleen: they did not live in public housing or apartments subsidized by vouchers. Three in four families who qualified for assistance received nothing.

By and large, the poor do not want some small life. They don't want to game the system or eke out an existence; they want to thrive and contribute.

Families with children were turned away in as many as 7 in 10 housing searches.