Matthew Desmond

Evicted follows low-income tenants and landlords in Milwaukee, including families living in a predominantly Black inner-city neighborhood and residents of a largely white mobile-home park. Desmond used close fieldwork to show how eviction shapes employment, schooling, health, and family stability.

Evicted won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. The book had been published in 2016 and helped bring eviction research into national debates about American poverty.

In Poverty, by America, Desmond argues that poverty persists not only because some people lack resources, but because more affluent Americans benefit from arrangements that exploit poor workers and tenants. The book connects housing, wages, taxation, and public subsidies rather than treating poverty as an isolated personal failure.

Desmond founded the Eviction Lab at Princeton University. The project compiles and analyzes eviction data so researchers and communities can examine housing displacement across the United States.