Each year, millions of Americans are evicted from their homes.
This hour we talk with Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City started a national conversation about America’s eviction crisis.
Desmond is this year’s recipient of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center’s 2018 Stowe Prize For Social Justice Writing.
We ask Desmond--how do evictions disrupt not just families--but entire communities?
And the city of Hartford has an eviction rate that is more than twice the national average—that’s according to data from Desmond’s Eviction Lab.
We talk about the issue of housing affordability and access here in Connecticut, with the Connecticut Fair Housing Center and with Connecticut’s Housing Commissioner. Does our state have enough affordable housing available for those who need it?
Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.
Lucy Nalpathanchil will be moderating a discussion with Matthew Desmond at Stowe Prize Day on Wednesday, September 5. The event is free and open to the public--register online here.
GUESTS:
- Dr. Matthew Desmond - Professor of Sociology at Princeton University and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. He is the principal investigator at the Eviction Lab at Princeton (@just_shelter)
- Erin Kemple - Executive Director of the Connecticut Fair Housing Center
- Milagros Ortiz - Tenant at the Clay Arsenal Renaissance Apartments in Hartford
- Evonne Klein - Commissioner of Connecticut’s Department of Housing
READING LIST:
NPR: First-Ever Evictions Database Shows: 'We're In the Middle Of A Housing Crisis' (April 2018)- "‘Eviction isn't just a condition of poverty; it's a cause of poverty,’ Desmond says. ‘Eviction is a direct cause of homelessness, but it also is a cause of residential instability, school instability [and] community instability.’"
Explore the Eviction Lab's map and data on eviction rates around the country.
Hartford Courant: These Tenants Took On A Millionaire Absentee Landlord — And Won (June 2018) – “They had no organizing experience, no legal representation and, for some, not even a high school diploma. But over the past 11 months, five tenants of a North End affordable housing complex emerged as the public faces of a successful campaign to oust their landlord, Queens, N.Y., resident Emmanuel Ku.”
CT Mirror: Connecticut’s Housing is Among the Nation’s Most Unaffordable (June 2018) – “The national average renter would need to make $1.02 more per hour for a two-bedroom apartment to be affordable, the report says. In Connecticut, the tenant would need to make $5.22 more an hour. This is the eighth widest gap between average renter wage and housing wage in the country, making Connecticut follow behind the likes of Hawaii, California, Massachusetts, and others.”
Catie Talarski contributed to this show.
