Last night I finished the book, gotta say it's even more impactful than I expected to be. At the end, Arleen (one of the single-mother tenant) lost her home because her son kicked the neighbor then one of her kid is taken by Child Protective Service. It must be really hard for her and the kids, emotionally. I wonder how much pain the kids had swallowed from being kicked out repeatedly, changing schools repeatedly, going to school without a friend repeatedly before he kicked the neighbor.
Scott, the nurse had finally made it back to being a nurse, but it almost took forever. I sorta understand why the nursing association made it very hard for an addicted to get back his licence, yet the abuse of painkillers made it so easy for one to get addicted. It's like for a normal person, he would have to make a lot of efforts to not get addicted therefore not be exploited by the pharmacutical companies, and also make a lot of efforts to prove he's clean to the nursing association. One should have freedom to make it back as well as having the freedom of not being exploited by pharmacutical companies.
The last part is my favorite part. The author opened up, his honest made the reality somehow more relatable. He talked about his family's financial difficulties and being evicted growing up, how that and colledge study inspired him to dig into being poor. It was heartfelt. I felt the author poured his soul into this project. He's made interesting observation of himself when living in the hood as a white male: he was more respected compared to others, his black roommate wanted to "protect" him. Racial discrimination had been analyzed in previous chapters but it was so impactful when I'm in the author's shoes.
Overall, it's a great book. It really dig into the root of eviction, "Is housing part of every American's right", and the causes of eviction. It's more than eviction. It's about US, about the so-called free market, about capitalism, about how the country works. I can't thank the author enough for making me to think about all that above. Highly recommend. If one took this book by heart when young, I dare say he/she would steer clear a LOT of potential problems in future.
And here are my favorite qoutes:
- Child Labor laws, the minimum wage, workplace safety regulations, and other protections we now take for granted, came about when we chose to place the wellbeing of people above money. There are losers and winners. There are losers because there are winners. 'Every condition exists,' Martin Luther King, Jr. once wrote, 'simply because someone profits by its existence.
- “Every condition exists,” Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote, “simply because someone profits by its existence. This economic exploitation is crystallized in the slum.” Exploitation. Now, there’s a word that has been scrubbed out of the poverty debate.”
- The home is the center of life. It is a refuge from the grind of work, the pressure of school, and the menace of the streets. We say that at home, we can “be ourselves.” Everywhere else, we are someone else. At home, we remove our masks. The home is the wellspring of personhood. It is where our identity takes root and blossoms, where as children, we imagine, play, and question, and as adolescents, we retreat and try. As we grow older, we hope to settle into a place to raise a family or pursue work. When we try to understand ourselves, we often begin by considering the kind of home in which we were raised.
- No one thought the poor more undeserving than the poor themselves.
- The year the police called Sherrena, Wisconsin saw more than one victim per week murdered by a current or former romantic partner or relative. 10 After the numbers were released, Milwaukee’s chief of police appeared on the local news and puzzled over the fact that many victims had never contacted the police for help. A nightly news reporter summed up the chief’s views: “He believes that if police were contacted more often, that victims would have the tools to prevent fatal situations from occurring in the future.” What the chief failed to realize, or failed to reveal, was that his department’s own rules presented battered women with a devil’s bargain: keep quiet and face abuse or call the police and face eviction.
- We have the money. We’ve just made choices about how to spend it. Over the years, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have restricted housing aid to the poor but expanded it to the affluent in the form of tax benefits for homeowners. 57 Today, housing-related tax expenditures far outpace those for housing assistance. In 2008, the year Arleen was evicted from Thirteenth Street, federal expenditures for direct housing assistance totaled less than $40.2 billion, but homeowner tax benefits exceeded $171 billion. That number, $171 billion, was equivalent to the 2008 budgets for the Department of Education, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Agriculture combined. 58 Each year, we spend three times what a universal housing voucher program is estimated to cost (in total ) on homeowner benefits, like the mortgage-interest deduction and the capital-gains exclusion. Most federal housing subsidies benefit families with six-figure incomes. 59 If we are going to spend the bulk of our public dollars on the affluent—at least when it comes to housing—we should own up to that decision and stop repeating the politicians’ canard about one of the richest countries on the planet being unable to afford doing more. If poverty persists in America, it is not for lack of resources.
- You could only say ‘I’m sorry, I can’t’ so many times before you began to feel worthless, edging closer to a breaking point. So you protected yourself, in a reflexive way, by finding ways to say ‘No, I won’t.’ I cannot help you. So, I will find you unworthy of help.
by dongludi