Book Review: Poverty by America Matthew Desmond

    Crown Publishers, New York (2023)

Overall, a good book and a worthwhile read. Having read his excellent previous book, Evicted, I was anxious to read this one. This book, in many ways, both deepens and broadens his previous assessment of how the poor are not only exploited, but exploited in ways that benefit most of us in ways we don’t even consider. He writes not only about greedy banks and landlords, but also about the many who label themselves progressives but help sustain poverty nonetheless. He uses the example of progressives who will hang Black Lives Matter banners outside their doors but will fight tooth and nail to make sure that only those Blacks who can afford mansions situated on multiple acre lots are able to move into their neighborhoods.

     Going further down the income scale to middle income and working class neighborhoods, he makes the same case about how exclusionary zoning keeps out any housing type other than single family homes. But here, he also expands the analysis, not to justify the exclusion, but to help explain it. He explains it on the basis of considering how every wealth tier that Americans fall into, below the most wealthy among us, is populated by those who are economically insecure and know that the only insurance policy they have to avoid destitution and pass along some wealth to their children is based upon the value of their homes. This is the case, as the author states, in spite of research that has shown, such as was the experience in New Jersey, that mixed housing does not drive down home values.

     He uses other examples as well to demonstrate how we can benefit to the detriment of others without thinking twice about it. Many of us enjoy free banking services, paid for by the $12 billion in overdraft fees paid by the poor. “Just 9 percent of account holders paid 84% of these fees.”  This explains the title of the book. The author is not writing about poverty in America, but poverty made by Americans. He goes on to posit that we benefit from poverty, so we either purposefully (through exploitation) or mindlessly (by ignoring our benefits) create and sustain it. This not only benefits the richest among us but also creates anxiety for the rest of us, who then need to take advantage for granted, see advantage as a given, distinguish ourselves from those less well-off and even blame them for the problems we created or support. Poverty and our attitudes towards it are baked into the system and into our socialization regarding it. He characterizes this by reference to one of my favorite sociologists, C. Wright Mills, who labeled this social phenomenon as “structural immorality.”

     There are other worthwhile takeaways from the book as well, just as are found in his first book. For most of those I know and have worked with, none of the information in this book will generally come as a surprise. I say generally because there were some facts that I was not aware of and actually found amazing. Here are some examples of things I did not know or have not given much thought to:

• I did not know, never thought about the fact, that poverty “measures exclude everyone in prison and jail – not to mention those in psych wards, halfway houses and homeless shelters.”
• “Nationwide, for every dollar budgeted for TANF in 2020, poor families received just 22 cents.” Thank you, Bill Clinton. He goes on to say that the other money is diverted to family planning, anti-abortion, and pro-abstinence organizations as well as cars and football tickets for non-profit executives, evangelical singers who perform at rallies, and One Million Dollars + in speaking fees for Brett Farve to give inspirational talks (which I am not sure ever happened). The Brett Farve thing I knew about but would never have guessed that the poor on TANF only get 22 cents of every dollar appropriated.
• If conservatives think that single-parenthood is a major cause of poverty, “then why isn’t it a major cause in Ireland or Italy or Sweden?” The issue is not single-parenthood, but the public and social supports guaranteed to all.
• “Every year: over $11 billion in overdraft fees, $1.6 billion in check cashing fees, and up to $9.8 billion in payday loan fees” are paid by the poorest among us. This amount of money is mind-boggling, especially when you look up a bit further on the income scale and think about banks being able to charge 29% on credit cards and other forms of credit.
• “Roughly half of the benefits of the thirteen largest individual tax breaks accrue to the richest families.” A major point he makes regards tax expenditure spending in this country — most goes to those who need it the least.

     There are other great points he makes in the book. He talks about universal income supports, for example. But towards the end of the book, he makes a sweeping statement about how poverty is not “simply the condition of not having enough money. It’s the condition of not having enough choice and being taken advantage of because of that.” Again, there is truth in this statement, but he uses it to set up one of his main points that ending segregation is critical to ending poverty. Towards the end of the book, he tries to summarize his prescription for poverty elimination in three ways. “Lift the poor by balancing our social safety net; empower the poor by reining in exploitation; and invest in broad prosperity by turning away from segregation. That’s how we end poverty in America.” He makes the case that a poor person in a well-off neighborhood may still be poor, but they will not be as poor as in a crime-ridden, service-deficient, area. I think his reasoning is deficient in a number of ways.

     I am staunchly opposed to forced segregation. But I think he takes the argument of integration too far, placing too much weight on it to solve the problems of poverty. There was not enough attention paid to how providing relocation to the most motivated and mobile will either further ghettoize those remaining in poor areas or make them more vulnerable to being displaced as the little political clout they have will decrease in proportion to the changing upscale demographics caused by gentrification. There is little mention of how deficient or non-existent public transportation is in affluent areas. Busing will help with getting the kids to a better school but does not help parents without a car or only one car to access job opportunities or meaningfully integrate into a neighborhood. Of course, these relocation programs will also require an end to exclusionary zoning, which the author rightfully calls for but remains a tough political battle.

     I have dedicated my adult life and career to working for public investment in low-income neighborhoods, targeting those investments to the people who need it most and who have borne the brunt of the historical government and private policies that have created poverty to begin with and continue to maintain it. Of course, people should have choice. No one should be forced to live or be prevented from living anywhere they want to simply due to discriminatory exclusionary policies or attitudes. However, the history of this country suggests that we can legislate against abuses, but those abuses will not go away. Sooner or later new and more elaborate outlets will be employed to exploit the vulnerable. Until we find common cause against those who use exploitation to feed insecurity, possessiveness, fear and bias in the rest of us, the problem of poverty will persist and likely get worse. Fairness, like equality and freedom, is not something that can be mandated. It is the result of living in an ethical system of interconnected and inter-dependent human relations.

     On this last point, I am reminded of a quote from sociologist, Dorothy Lee. The quote is tied to equality, but it is just as relevant to the subject of fairness, and freedom for that matter. From her book, Freedom and Culture, “the principle of equality is adequate to democracy only when it derives naturally from the tenet of the dignity of man, only when it is a by-product of the absolute and permeating respect for human worth.” Fairness, equality, and freedom will become a lasting, pervasive attribute of our society when it is a “by-product” of our universal belief in the dignity of all people and when we redefine our self interest as residing in the interest of others as well.