Evicted_ Poverty and Profit in the American City - Matthew Desmond Page 0,176

In his report to the US Department of Labor that would later become infamous, Moynihan wrote: “The Negro situation is commonly perceived by whites in terms of the visible manifestation of discrimination and poverty….It is more difficult, however, for whites to perceive the effect that three centuries of exploitation have had on the fabric of Negro society itself….Here is where the true injury has occurred: unless this damage is repaired, all the effort to end discrimination and poverty and injustice will come to little.” Daniel Patrick Moynihan, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (Washington, DC: US Department of Labor, 1965).

45. This point is indebted to Satter’s Family Properties.

46. On rip-off schemes, see Alan Andreasen, The Disadvantaged Consumer (New York: The Free Press, 1975); Michael Lewis, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (New York: Norton, 2010), 20; David Caplovitz, The Poor Pay More (New York: The Free Press, 1967). On payday loans, see Pew Charitable Trust, Payday Lending in America: Who Borrows, Where They Borrow, and Why (Washington, DC: Pew, July 19, 2012); Gary Rivlin, Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc. (New York: Harper, 2010).

47. On markets being embedded in state and social relations, see Mark Granovetter, “Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness,” American Journal of Sociology 91 (1985): 481–510; Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001 [1944]). On the relationship between poverty and policing, see Megan Comfort, “When Prison Is a Refuge: America’s Messed Up,” Chronicle of Higher Education, December 2, 2013; David Garland, The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001); Loïc Wacquant, Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009); Bruce Western, Punishment and Inequality in America (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2006); Alice Goffman, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014).

48. Oliver Cromwell Cox, Caste, Class, and Race: A Study in Social Dynamics (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1948), 238.

49. Katie Dodd, Quarterly Benefits Summary (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Department for Work and Pensions, 2015); Hugo Priemus, Peter Kemp, and David Varady, “Housing Vouchers in the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands: Current Issues and Future Perspectives,” Housing Policy Debate 16 (2005): 575–609; “Housing Benefit: How Does It Work?,” BBC News, November 9, 2011.

50. No study has shown that, compared to housing vouchers, project-based assistance can deliver housing at equal quality for less cost. On the cost of public housing compared to vouchers, see Janet Currie, The Invisible Safety Net: Protecting the Nation’s Poor Children and Families (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), chapter 4; Amy Cutts and Edgar Olsen, “Are Section 8 Housing Subsidies Too High?,” Journal of Housing Economics 11 (2002): 214–43.

On neighborhood quality of voucher holders compared to public housing residents, see Sandra Newman and Ann Schnare, “ ‘…And a Suitable Living Environment’: The Failure of Housing Programs to Deliver on Neighborhood Quality,” Housing Policy Debate 8 (1997): 703–41; Edgar Olsen, “Housing Programs for Low-Income Households,” in Means-Tested Transfer Programs in the United States, ed. Robert Moffitt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 365–442.

51. Brian Jacob and Jens Ludwig, “The Effects of Housing Assistance on Labor Supply: Evidence from a Voucher Lottery,” American Economic Review 102 (2012): 272–304; Mark Shroder, “Does Housing Assistance Perversely Affect Self-Sufficiency? A Review Essay,” Journal of Housing Economics 11 (2002): 381–417; Sandra Newman, Scott Holupka, and Joseph Harkness, “The Long-Term Effects of Housing Assistance on Work and Welfare,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 28 (2009): 81–101.

52. Tellingly, countries with universal housing programs do not have minimum housing standards like America’s limited voucher program does. When everyone in the country can afford decent housing, you don’t need minimum standards because empowered renters can take their voucher elsewhere. Priemus et al., “Housing Vouchers in the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands,” 582.

53. Riis, How the Other Half Lives, 201.

54. A universal voucher program would not solve all our problems. Especially in tight markets, vouchers cannot fully shield tenants from rent inflation. Only significant government regulation (like rent control) or market alterations (like expanding housing supply) can do that.

In fact, there is some evidence—it is thin—that our current voucher program might be driving up everybody’s rent: not only voucher holders’ but unassisted renters’ too. The main reason is simple. If millions of poor people opt out of the private market for public housing, that will lower demand and, thus, rent at the bottom of