“If incarceration had come to define the lives of men from impoverished black neighborhoods, eviction was shaping the lives of women. Poor black men were locked up. Poor black women were locked out.” PovertyInner CityEviction Book:Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City Source: Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“Poor black families were “immersed in a domestic web of a large number of kin and friends whom they [could] count on,” wrote the anthropologist Carol Stack in All Our Kin. Those entwined in such a web swapped goods and services on a daily basis. This did little to lift families out of poverty, but it was enough to keep them afloat. But large-scale social transformations—the crack epidemic, the rise of the black middle class, and the prison boom among them—had frayed the family safety net in poor communities. So had state policies like Aid to Families with Dependent Children that sought to limit “kin dependence” by giving mothers who lived alone or with unrelated roommates a larger stipend than those who lived with relatives.” PovertyHousingInner CityEviction Book:Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City Source: Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City