Evicted_ Poverty and Profit in the American City - Matthew Desmond Page 0,139
and everyone at Pforzheimer House provided my family and me with community.
This project was supported in a major way by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, through its “How Housing Matters” initiative, as well as by the Ford Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the National Science Foundation, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy, the Institute for Research on Poverty, the William F. Milton Fund, the Joint Center for Housing Studies, Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Barry Widera at Court Data Technologies helped me collect hundreds of thousands of eviction records. Jeffrey Blossom at Harvard’s Center for Geographic Analysis geo-coded huge data sets, merging them with population estimates. Chrissy Greer and Liza Karakashian accurately transcribed challenging ethnographic material. In Wisconsin, I also thank Tim Ballering, David Brittain, April Hartman, Michael Kienitz, Maudwella Kirkendoll, and Bradley Werginz for lending me their expertise.
Gillian Brassil, my obsessive and tireless fact-checker, made this book better. Michael Carliner answered several questions about housing data and policy. Marion Fourcade hosted me at Sciences Po for a week, where I began to outline this book on large sheets of paper. For their intellectual guidance and support, I also thank Elijah Anderson, Javier Auyero, Jacob Avery, Vicki Been, Rogers Brubaker, Megan Comfort, Kyle Crowder, John Diedrich, Mitchell Duneier, Ingrid Gould Ellen, Russell Engler, Joseph “Piko” Ewoodzie Jr., Daniel Fetter, Gary Alan Fine, Herbert Gans, Phillip Goff, Mark Granovetter, Suzi Hall, Peter Hart-Brinson, Chester Hartman, Christopher Herbert, Neil Fligstein, Colin Jerolmack, Nikki Jones, Jack Katz, Shamus Khan, Eric Klinenberg, Issa Kohler-Hausmann, John Levi Martin, Kate McCoy, Alexandra Murphy, Tim Nelson, Amanda Pallais, Andrew Papachristos, Mary Pattillo, Victor Rios, Eva Rosen, Megan Sandel, Barbara Sard, Hilary Silver, Adam Slez, Diane Vaughan, Loïc Wacquant, Christopher Wildeman, Eva Williams, and Robb Willer.
I thank the reviewers of this book as well as dozens of anonymous readers of related academic papers. I am grateful for having presented parts of this project at the following institutions, where I received helpful feedback: the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, American Sociological Association, Australian National University, Brandeis University, British Sociological Association, Brown University, Center for Housing Policy, Columbia University, Duke University, Harvard University, Harvard Business School, Harvard Law School, Harvard School of Public Health, the Housing Justice Network, King’s College London, London School of Economics, National Low Income Housing Coalition Legislative Forum, Marquette University, Max Planck–Sciences Po Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York Law School, New York University Law School, Northwestern University, Population Association of America, Purdue University, Rice University, Stanford University, the State University of New York at Buffalo, Université de Paris, University of Aarhus, University of Amsterdam, University of California at Berkeley and the Boalt Law School, University of California at Los Angeles, University of Chicago, University of Georgia, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, University of Queensland, University of Texas at Austin, University of Washington, University of Wisconsin at Madison, University of York, Urban Affairs Association, West Coast Poverty Center, Yale University, and the Yale Law School.
This book is dedicated to my sister, Michelle, who continues to inspire me with her pure curiosity and heart for the poor. Thank you, Shavon, Nick, and Maegan Desmond, for your unceasing support and love. And thank you, Sterling and Walter, my lights, my joy.
Tessa—what can I say? Thank you for anchoring me and empowering this work. You have been there in every moment, and I am overwhelmed with gratitude for your wisdom, sacrifice, and love. “Thy firmness makes my circle just / And makes me end where I begun.”*
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* John Donne, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.”
NOTES
PROLOGUE: COLD CITY
1. Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail (New York: Vintage, 1979), 53–55; St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1945), 85–86; Beryl Satter, Family Properties: How the Struggle over Race and Real Estate Transformed Chicago and Urban America (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009). Although nationally representative historical data on eviction do not exist, these historical accounts of the first half of the twentieth century depict evictions as rare and shocking events. Some local studies from the second half of the twentieth century, however, document nontrivial rates of involuntary displacement in American cities. See Peter Rossi, Why Families Move, 2nd ed. (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1980 [1955]); H.