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Full-Text Articles in Law
Evicted: The Socio-Legal Case For The Right To Housing, Lisa T. Alexander
Evicted: The Socio-Legal Case For The Right To Housing, Lisa T. Alexander
Faculty Scholarship
Matthew Desmond's Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City is a triumphant work that provides the missing socio-legal data needed to prove why America should recognize housing as a human right. Desmond's masterful study of the effect of evictions on Milwaukee's urban poor in the wake of the 2008 U.S. housing crisis humanizes the evicted, and their landlords, through rich and detailed ethnographies. His intimate portrayals teach Evicted's readers about the agonizingly difficult choices that low-income, unsubsidized tenants must make in the private rental market. Evicted also reveals the contradictions between "law on the books" and "law-in-action." Its most …
Exploiting The Poor: Housing, Markets, And Vulnerability, Ezra Rosser
Exploiting The Poor: Housing, Markets, And Vulnerability, Ezra Rosser
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
Matthew Desmond provocatively claims that landlords exploit poor tenants in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016). This essay celebrates Desmond's work and explores the exploitation claim, focusing on how landlords deliberately exploit vulnerable tenants and on forms of market-based exploitation.