LANDLORDS HOLD ALL THE CARDS

“The landlords in Evicted hold all the cards. Technically, they can’t retaliate against tenants who complain of stopped-up toilets or broken windows. But they can evict anyone who fails to pay the rent, regardless of the housing conditions. The result is a kind of devil’s pact. ‘Tenants who fell behind either had to accept unpleasant, degrading, and sometimes dangerous housing conditions or be evicted,’ [Matthew] Desmond writes. When cases go to court, tenants rarely win. About 70 percent of them don’t even appear. They can’t miss work or find child care or stomach the humiliation. The sound of eviction court is the call of a name, ‘a pause, and three loud thumps of the stamp.’”

Jason DeParle, “Kicked Out in America,” a review in the New York Review (March 10, 2016, pp:25-27) of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, by Matthew Desmond.