Evicted

Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond spent years living in a Milwaukee trailer park and a poor rooming house, following eight families and two landlords through the machinery of eviction. He tracks tenants as they fall behind, get put out on the street, scramble for the next apartment, and fall behind again, and he shows how losing a home is not the end point of poverty but an engine that pushes it deeper. Pairing immersive reporting with original data, the book makes the case that stable housing is the missing foundation beneath every other struggle these families face.