Book Club Guide

Evicted

by Matthew Desmond · 2016 · Politics & Society

Key themes

Eviction as the engine of poverty — not its consequence
The private rental market and who profits from precarity
The invisibility of the housing crisis and what makes it visible

About this book

Poverty and the housing crisis told through eight families; immersive, humane reporting.

Published in 2016, Evicted won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Desmond spent fourteen months living in two Milwaukee neighbourhoods to research it.

Discussion questions

Desmond argues that eviction is not a consequence of poverty but a cause of it — that it destabilises lives in ways that create and perpetuate poverty. How does he demonstrate this in the lives he follows?
The book follows both tenants and landlords. What is Desmond doing by giving Sherrena — the landlord who profits from poverty — a sympathetic portrayal alongside her tenants?
Desmond embedded in two Milwaukee neighbourhoods for fourteen months. What does this methodological choice add — and what does it risk?
The housing market he describes operates by specific rules that were created by policy choices. What policy changes does Evicted suggest are necessary — and does the book take a position?
Evicted won the Pulitzer Prize. What does it do that journalism, policy reports or academic sociology cannot — and what does each of those forms add that the narrative cannot?