Poverty and Homelessness in America
In Mathew Desmond’s book, “Evicted,” there is a story of those living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Desmond describes how the toll of living exactly off a paycheck can cause strain in family finances and upkeep. The individuals in this story live a life of misery and depression. They spend more than half of their salaries to pay rent and a quarter of what is left to pay their electricity bills. The writer describes a home as the center of life. It is a source shelter from all the challenges that life succumbs people through. It is only at homes that people can become their true selves without fear of judgment or ridicule. In this book, home is shown as a safety net. Desmond describes how, despite economic fluctuations and stagnant income earnings, housing costs have kept soaring. According to the book, most of the evictions had been forced and not according to the law.
The author explains that the evictions depicted in Milwaukee are only but a depiction of one among several areas and eviction situations across America. This book emphasizes how housing plays a significant role in poverty and homelessness in America. The people living in Milwaukee go into the extent of doing odd jobs for their landlords to get a reduction or discount on the expected rent. There are characters in the book who become ill due to the conditions of their houses. For instance, a tenant on Thirteenth Street complains that her baby is sick due to cold in the house. The tenant had called the Department of Neighborhood Services and complained about the housing conditions before informing the landlord (Desmond, 2016). She later complains to the landlord that the house as broken windows, but her complaint is quickly dismissed. Furthermore, due to her complaint, she is given a five-day eviction notice.
Despite the law forbidding against such behavior, landlords evicted tenants anytime they wanted. In the book, most tenants find their houses in deplorable conditions. For instance, Lamar’s house is said to have initially been in a bad state with maggots sprouting over the floors (Desmond, 2016). Most of the people living in Milwaukee had jobs in the manufacturing sector. However, during the second half of the twentieth century, employers moved their plants overseas to areas where there were cheap labor and weaker unions. This led to most of the people losing their jobs and an increase in the rate of black poverty.
Lamar is used as an example of people who are disabled and receive a lesser stipend than the rest of the population. Lamar lost the use of his legs during the world war and had a family to support. He, however, got easily dismissed in his search for a job. With his low monthly stipend and no other way of earning income, he struggles to provide for his two sons, as 75% of the allowance goes into paying rent. When he mistakenly receives welfare benefits, he cashes the checks and buys clothes for his sons and furniture for their new home. However, when the mistake is realized, the overpayment gets deducted from the following month’s stipend, thus making him be two months’ rent in debt. To work on the mortgage, Lamar cleans the basement of the landlord’s house and is paid much less than it is ethically required. He works until his feet are sore and doesn’t ask his boys for help because he feels responsible for putting them in that living situation.
The landlords in the story have become greedy and feed on their tenants’ desperation and frustrations. Lenny is a manager of a trailer park. He had been raised in that place. The book describes that the trailer park had different kinds of people whose houses were arranged according to their levels of income and characters. The drug users and offenders live on one side, those working two and three shifts live on another side, and those with white-collar jobs live on the side furthest from the first two. Tobin, the owner of the trailer park, lived in Illinois but made regular visits to the trailer park. He regarded the people harshly and demanded rent without considerations of the financial state of the occupants of the house. Despite the poor conditions of the houses, he demanded more rent than he should. Tobin evaluated the money earned from the trailer park. He was not quick to evict the tenants when rent was late, but neither was he lenient (Desmond, 2016). During a formal council hearing to determine the fate of those living in the trailer park, the president decides that tenants who were not able to pay rent on time be evicted (Desmond,2016). Tobin returned to the trailer and began evicting those tenants who he found trouble dealing with. Evictions, at the time, were considered a way of reasserting ownership of land.
In Manufacturing Insecurity by Esther Sullivan, the author gives a story of Kathleen and her husband, Chip, who, in an attempt to live an American retirement dream, had ended up being frustrated. The couple had bought a mobile home and found a spot in a park. The author gives the readers a depiction of the number of people living in mobile homes. The couple paid off the mobile home in installments and land rent every month. Despite the stigma that came with living in a mobile home, Kathleen felt comfortable in her mobile home before the evictions began. Most of the people living in the park were above fifty-five years of age, and their level of productivity was low (Sullivan, 2018). They depended on welfare checks and aid from their children to those who had any.
There was a potential sale of the mobile home park where Kathleen lived. Most of those people who resided in the place were confused and depressed, wondering where they will move it. There was a developer who needed to purchase the park to build apartments. Kathleen calls in movers to inspect her home to determine whether she will be able to relocate. However, her mobile home was considered too heavy and aged and could not be moved. She was, therefore, at a loss of losing both her mobile home and the mobile home park.
Kathleen, together with her neighbors living in the mobile home park, try to file their concerns on moving to the council. For eight months, they live in fear of losing their homes. Despite their pleas, the council approves the sale and leaves the residents in a pile of frustration and confusion. The council justified their action by describing the eviction as a necessity to improve the condition of the city by upgrading its general outlook (Sullivan,2018). Eviction notices were slid beneath their doors, and the residents were expected to move. Kathleen was among the last ones to move after she found a park twenty miles away from her first home. She visited the park frequently to collect her mails. Kathleen’s experience is used in the book to depict the struggle undergone by most people living in mobile homes in Texas and Florida, who have been evicted from parks. These people have become victims of urban growth and development.
The two books discussed above describe the challenges faced by people who have low-income. Such people have only a few existing housing options to choose from. To them, it’s either trailer parks with poor housing conditions or mobile homes on rented land. They hardly manage to live off their earnings and have to undertake other roles to earn a sustainable income. The landlords and landowners in both stories are described as manipulative. They take advantage of the inability of their tenants to pay on time, frustrate them and ask for their services for a minimum deduction of their debts. The books depict how quickly low-income Americans, especially African-Americans, are evicted whenever more clients are available.
Evictions unravel the ties of the community that had developed over time through cohesion. This reduces the capability of a community that has new members every day to be unified towards one goal of promoting security and combatting crime. Children raised in poor neighborhoods after eviction may face challenges that degrade their ability to learn, their health, and their sense of belonging. These low-income families end up spending more of their salary on rent, thus reducing the amount of money left to provide for other needs of their children. Such children may feel neglected and resort to crime and living in the streets. The least-comfortable apartments in the market are still too expensive to the most impoverished families, thus leaving a gap in the economy that may require lots of sacrifices to fill.
Furthermore, both books talk about the losses that are caused by evictions. People lose their possessions, homes, and jobs leading to them accepting substandard housing. Such people become psychologically affected. They become depressed and easily fall ill. Suicidal rates have increased over the years amongst populations that have had a history of evictions, thus leading to evictions being considered a traumatic event.
Despite the similarities in these two books, there is a difference in the theme of urbanization. In Manufacturing Insecurity, most people are evicted from places to enable the buyers to build better infrastructure such as apartments. For instance, mobile home residents are evicted from mobile home Park in Florida to allow the buyer to make apartments that will increase the value of the city. To the seller, their need to grow their city in terms of more prominent buildings and structures is more important than allowing residents to make a home in the only place they have known for over ten years.
However, in Evicted, the people who are evicted have the option of another place to find housing. In such places, however, they meet property owners who have overpriced poor-conditioned houses and have no regard for the law about tenant and landlord relations (Desmond, 2016). When they decide to settle in the house and complain of broken windows, the landlords give them a one-day eviction notice leaving them frustrated and at the beginning of the loop all over again. Sullivan’s book views eviction as a step taken towards urban development. Still, Desmond’s book sees evictions as an effect of a strenuous economy and a soaring housing rent with stagnant income.
Homelessness and poverty have become inseparable over the years. There has been an increase in the number of homeless in America. More than half a million people in the United States at given nights in 2017 (Antle 2018). According to Antle, an increase in the homeless population is due to the increase in housing rents, thus making it difficult for the poor to afford. Despite flat wage growth over the years, the rent for a house has doubled over the same years. The rents are rising due to a shortage of housing, thus leading to the restoration of neighborhoods previously occupied by poor people. The cycle eventually leaves the poor people homeless.
There have been attempts to salvage the situation in several countries. “Housing First” strategy, as applied in Utah, is the most effective way of dealing with homelessness. The approach involves putting the homeless in free or cheap apartments with no preconditions. However, implementing this strategy in other places has become difficult due to the unavailability of vacant houses in crowded cities. Even though some homeless people live off begging in the streets, some of them have jobs. Such people have resolved using their low income to sustain their families and live in mobile homes and other temporary houses. Furthermore, the government has formulated policies that ban the use of large mobile homes and trailer parks that could comfortably accommodate a family.
The article on America’s homelessness crisis outlines the same aspects that have been discussed in Sullivan’s book and Desmond’s book. The article supports Desmond’s work that there has been an increase in rents and a stagnation in levels of income over the years. More so, the article depicts the homeless as people who have jobs, as discussed in “Evicted,” where people worked more than one shift to be able to afford sub-standard houses. In addition to that, the article supports Sullivan’s discussions on mobile homes as a cheaper means of housing than renting a house or apartment. The mobile homes are parked alongside other mobile homes in an area that is sold to build fancy buildings.
References
Antle, W. J. (2018, March 11). America’s homelessness crisis. The Week.
Desmond, M. (2016). Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American city. Broadway Books.
Sullivan, E. (2018). Manufactured insecurity: Mobile home parks and Americans’ tenuous right to place. University of California Press.