A discussion of the book Evicted, and in particular its suggestion that rent in poor neighborhoods is not much lower than the rent in middle-class areas.
I recently read Matthew Desmond's book Evicted; one of the author's more interesting observations is his suggestion that renters in poor neighborhoods pay only a little less than renters in richer neighborhoods. First, I did a little research to see if current economic reality backs up his claim. A large chunk of Evicted is about College Mobile Home Park in the South Side of Milwaukee, where trailers rent for about $480 per month. By contrast, in middle-middle-class Cudahy, the cheapest one-bedroom apartment advertised on Craigslist is a little over $600, and the median rent is just under $800. Even if neighborhoods like Cudahy are a little more expensive than Desmond’s research suggested, they still cost only a few hundred dollars more than the mobile home park. So why do the down-and-outers profiled in Desmond’s book live in trailer parks or poor neighborhoods?
Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the contract rent for a destitute tenant in a lower-class area is the same as the contract rent in the average neighborhood. It does not necessarily follow that the former tenant can easily move to the average neighborhood, for several reasons.
First of all, Desmond’s book shows that lower-class tenants do not always pay the contract rent. He notes that in the poorest neighborhoods, landlords are sometimes willing to accept partial payment if a tenant is not unduly troublesome, or seems likely to get more income in the future. Thus, the rent is a sticker price subject to negotiation. By contrast, in middle-income areas with higher rent, I am not sure if this is the case; if I started paying half my rent, my landlord in Midtown Manhattan might not be as indulgent as the trailer-park landlord profiled by Desmond.
Second, many landlords in middle-class areas have created a variety of policies designed to screen out tenants who cannot pay the hoped-for rent. Even when I lived in cities much cheaper than Manhattan, I usually had to pay a security deposit for an apartment- something that tenants with no savings probably cannot afford. In addition, I usually have to supply the names of prior landlords as references and undergo a credit check; a tenant with a history of evictions will probably not have good references from prior landlords, and a credit check will usually disclose the tenant’s financial problems. So the reference/credit check process is likely to exclude a destitute tenant even from a fairly cheap apartment; thus, the tenant's only recourse will be the sort of landlord who does not ask too many questions. Such a landlord is most likely to be found in places where nearly everyone is destitute and landlords thus cannot be as choosey as in better-off areas.
In sum, the listed rent alone is not enough to explain why the poor cannot easily switch neighborhoods; landlords tend to prefer tenants who can be counted on to pay rent regularly, and have created policies that exclude tenants who are too poor to be able to do so.
Oregon Passes Exemption to Urban Growth Boundary
Cities have a one-time chance to acquire new land for development in a bid to increase housing supply and affordability.
Where Urban Design Is Headed in 2024
A forecast of likely trends in urban design and architecture.
Savannah: A City of Planning Contrasts
From a human-scales, plaza-anchored grid to suburban sprawl, the oldest planned city in the United States has seen wildly different development patterns.
Washington Tribes Receive Resilience Funding
The 28 grants support projects including relocation efforts as coastal communities face the growing impacts of climate change.
Adaptive Reuse Bills Introduced in California Assembly
The legislation would expand eligibility for economic incentives and let cities loosen regulations to allow for more building conversions.
LA's Top Parks, Ranked
TimeOut just released its list of the top 26 parks in the L.A. area, which is home to some of the best green spaces around.
City of Rochester
Boston Harbor Now
City of Bellevue
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research
Mpact Transit + Community
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research
City of Birmingham, Alabama
City of Laramie, Wyoming
Colorado Department of Local Affairs
Write for Planetizen
Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools
This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
Planning for Universal Design
Learn the tools for implementing Universal Design in planning regulations.