Evicted by Matthew Desmond

She was beginning to wonder what was most responsible for keeping them homeless:  her drug conviction from several years back, the fact that Ned was on the run and had no proof of income, their eviction record, their poverty, or their children.
--Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (Crown, 2016).

Desmond's book is a vivid portrait of those who get evicted in Milwaukee.  Constant evictions lead to losses of jobs and income, diminished school for the children and misery of all sorts.  Eviction makes it even harder to find a new place to live and leads to dubious bargains, such as not complaining about clogged sinks and toilets in order to avoid eviction.  Even Bernie Sanders has not talked about housing as a right in this country, as it is in many others. Desmond's intelligent solution is vouchers combined with rent stabilization:  "economists have argued that the current housing voucher program could be expanded to serve all poor families in America without additional spending if we prevented overcharging and made the program more efficient."

Eviction is both a cause and result of other problems, financial, political and psychological. I would suggest that, along with vouchers, we should also take the following steps:

Provide lawyers for those who are being evicted and cannot afford a lawyer (most landlords can).  Desmond points out that when tenants have lawyers their chances of keeping their homes increases dramatically.  Currently many tenants are fatalistic and don't even show up for their eviction hearing.

Offer more jobs and less incarceration.  As the men are locked up the women lose income and end up getting locked out.  Even the women risk losing their jobs if they take a day off to fight eviction in court.

Enforcement of laws that prohibit landlords from discriminating against families with children.

Single-payer healthcare.  Some of those who are evicted have mental and physical problems as well as addictions and, not surprisingly, have no health insurance; after food and rent there is often little money left.

Eviction brings it characters vividly to life, from Shereena the landlord to Arleen the tenant to Tobin, who makes a considerable profit running a trailer park and renting dilapidated trailers. Some people are considerably better than others at "gaming" a system that needs fixing.