Matthew Desmond’s Evicted illuminates the issue of low income housing and poverty that is prevalent across the United States. Desmond depicts what life entails in these communities in a direct approach using stories from actual people. The details of crime, the patterns of eviction, disparities in housing based on racial and social factors, and drug addiction are neither masked in elegant diction to soften the content nor purposely dramatized to exaggerate events to galvanize readers’ response. Evicted effectiveness stems from how Desmond presented his information. An intellectual approach consisting of statistical evidence, graphs, and other rhetorical methods tailored for a scholarly audience would be perceived as dulling to most readers. The storybook appeal over the presentation of numbers allows readers to empathize with the individuals within the book in a humanistic manner.
While depicting the life of people living in low income housing and facing evictions Desmond seeked to write objectively by presenting the issue from the landlord’s point of view. We can all agree that eviction is a devastating process that has repercussions beyond homelessness. When hearing stories about eviction landlords are often times villainized as unsympathetic, greedy urban despots to their tenants. However, the reality is like the case of Sherrena, a landlord, in Eviction. Landlords deal with their respective financial burdens and exercising leniency based on compassion can jeopardize the stake in their properties. “I guess I got to stop feeling sorry for these people because nobody is feeling sorry for me.” (Desmond, 11) Desmond does cite unfair eviction practices and tenants reluctance to call the landlord or even a building inspector to have a housing code violation addressed in fear of eviction. The in depth sometimes disconcerting details coupled with Desmond’s research shown in the form footnotes embedded throughout the book provide a compelling rhetorical approach to the reader’s pathos and lagos appeals.
Perhaps one of the most uniques features about the book is its indirect call for action. Desmond does not explicitly state in the book that the neglected social problem of eviction needs addressing nor asks the reader to partake in activism. Instead his call for action stems from the psychological effect the nature of stories in the book has. The heartbreaking realities that the people within the book live invokes a feeling of unjustified insensitive and social disservice in the absence of adequate activism. However, the book does not aim to cause the reader feel guilty. It simply presents information about the lives of many Americans that are seemly invisible in society’s scope. Whether one chooses to be a part of the campaign to address this or not ignorance and/or lack of acknowledgment that evictions are a prevalent issue in this country is inexcusable.
