Poverty and Lack of Affordable Housing Seminar in Social Science
Imagine that you are to make a public presentation before a concerned citizen’s council that draws attention to the pervasive problem of poverty and lack of affordable housing in particular.
Drawing upon Matthew Desmond’s ethnography and investigation of this issue, as dramatized in the stories of eviction, show why this should be a common, public concern, of how the problem has arisen and persists and its implications for all concerned and of possible policy proposals to address this. Given the relative brevity of this exercise, you should list some key theoretical ideas and generalizable claims in your analysis and adduce only as many illustrative materials such as the stories of the various characters in the ethnography) so as to make your argument rhetorically persuasive. You should minimally incorporate some claims about how the market and legal framework structures the “front-face” and manifest interaction between landlords and tenants.
For purposes of this exercise, assume that the detailed narrative accounts – the stories of the various people in Evicted – are known to the council and the reader. Your endeavor is to draw generalizable claims and key theoretical observations.
The paper should be a minimum of 5-6 pages (approximately 1,700-2,000 words). The essay should be submitted as a word and should observe the following format: title page, with subsequently numbered pages, double-spaced with 1″ margins all-around, in Times New Roman, 12 font.
Source required: Evicted by Matthew Desmond
