Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
Cover of first edition
AuthorMatthew Desmond
Audio read byDion Graham[1]
Cover artistNina Mangalanayagam (floor photo)[2]
Pavel Shynkarou (wall photo)[2]
Jake Nicolella (design)[2]
LanguageEnglish
SubjectSociology, poverty, low-income housing
Set inMilwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.
PublisherCrown
Publication date
March 2016
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (hardback)
Pages432
AwardPulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction
ISBN978-0-553-44743-9
OCLC936126297
339.4/60973
LC ClassHD7287.96.U6 D47 2016
Websitewww.evictedbook.com

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City is a 2016 nonfiction book by American sociologist Matthew Desmond. Set in the poorest areas of Milwaukee, Wisconsin during the 2007–2008 financial crisis and its immediate aftermath, the book follows eight families struggling to pay rent to their landlords, many of whom face eviction. Through a year of ethnographic fieldwork, Desmond's goal is to highlight the issues of extreme poverty, affordable housing, and economic exploitation in the United States.[3]

Evicted was well-received and won multiple book awards such as the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. The Pulitzer committee selected the book "for a deeply researched exposé that showed how mass evictions after the 2008 economic crash were less a consequence than a cause of poverty".[4]