‘Without stable shelter, everything else falls apart’: Author of ‘Evicted’ visits Madison

Arleen Belle lives with a stinging regret: When she was 19, she gave up a subsidized apartment in Milwaukee that rented for $137 a month to move in with a friend.

Since then, Belle and her sons have spent years shuffling between shelters and apartments with rents her income can barely cover, seeking, but never finding, a sustainable home.

They are up against overwhelming odds. Milwaukee’s waiting list for Section 8 rent assistance is currently 1,723 applicants. 

Author Matthew Desmond chronicles Belle’s quest, and those of seven other families, in his new book, “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City,” which was published March 1.

[1]Matthew Desmond spent a year and a half in Milwaukee’s poorest neighborhoods, documenting eight families’ quests for stable housing. He spoke about his new book “Evicted” at the Fluno Center in Madison last week. (Melissa Behling/Madison Commons)

Desmond, a professor of sociology at Harvard University, graduate of the University of Wisconsin’s sociology doctoral program and recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” grant, spoke about the book at the Fluno Center in Madison last week. (Editor’s note: While a student at UW-Madison, Desmond studied with Madison Commons’ publisher, Professor Lew Friedland.)

The book follows the true stories of eight families Desmond met during the year and a half he spent in Milwaukee’s poorest neighborhoods. With their permission, he lived alongside them and documented their stories.

Belle and her young sons, Jafaris and Jori, take the leading roles. Belle rents a two-bedroom apartment in one of Milwaukee’s worst neighborhoods for the going rate, $550 a month, utilities not included. The rent alone eats up 88 percent of her monthly income.

According to Desmond, the number is striking but far from uncommon: Most poor families spend at least 50 percent of monthly income on housing, and a quarter of poor families spend over 70 percent.

“Under these conditions, you don’t need a major shock to invite eviction,” he said.

In Belle’s case, it took the death of a close friend. When no one could pay for funeral costs, she offered to help, which caused her to fall behind on rent. Her landlord, Sherrena Tarver, whose own storyline spans the book, responded by serving Belle and her boys an eviction notice.

With each eviction, recovery becomes more and more unlikely. Landlords often reject applicants with previous evictions, and though it is illegal, discriminate against tenants with children, like Belle. Suffering eviction and experiencing homelessness of any length often leads to depression.

“Just my soul is messed up,” Belle told Desmond at one point. “Sometimes I find my body trembling or shaking. I’m tired but I can’t sleep.”

In a study, Desmond found that as many as two years after an eviction, mothers who experienced evictions had higher levels of depression symptoms than those who hadn’t been evicted.

“I learned that behavior that looks lazy or withdrawn to someone perched far above the poverty line can actually be a pacing technique,” Desmond said. Families living in poverty “cannot afford to give all their energy to today’s emergency only to have none left over for tomorrow’s.”

“I wish my life were different,” Belle told Desmond. “I wish when I be an old lady, I can sit back and look at my kids. And they be grown. And they, you know, become something. Something more than me. And we’ll all be together, and be laughing. We be remembering stuff like this and be laughing at it.”

Families who are evicted lose more than just their homes. They also lose their schools, neighborhoods, possessions, jobs, health – and spirit. “Poverty reduces people born for better things,” Desmond said.

Desmond concluded that eviction isn’t just a condition of poverty – it’s a cause – and that housing needs to be affirmed as a basic right, just as food and education have been.

“We can’t fix poverty without fixing housing,” he said.

He proposed a universal housing voucher program that ensures no family spends more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs.

Three in four families who qualify for housing assistance receive none, according to the book. Yet homeowner tax benefits effectively create a “universal housing program” for homeowners, Desmond said. It’s not a question of whether the funding is there, but how it is being used.

Critics argue that expanding housing voucher programs would discourage hard work. Desmond considers the argument irrelevant.

Maintaining the status quo is the biggest threat, he said. “Without stable shelter, everything else falls apart.”