EVICTED RENTER KILLED HIMSELF

“Evictions are brutal. [Matthew] Desmond watches as an armed deputy knocks and a mother pleads vainly for time. The mover says she can pay to store her possessions or have them left on the street. She can’t afford storage. ‘Curbside service, baby!’ the mover tells the crew. Three children watch their mother pace. ‘Her face had that look,’ Desmond writes. ‘The movers and the deputies knew it well. It was the look of someone realizing that her family would be homeless in a matter of hours.’ One woman from the trailer park spent $1,000 on the storage bills but fell behind and lost her belongings anyway. About 70 percent of evicted tenants who opt for storage do. A week earlier, a man asked the deputy for a private moment, then shot himself in the head.”

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.