In the book Evicted Matthew Desmond accompanies a landlord who rents several properties to low-income individuals in Milwaukee to eviction court. People who are being evicted have the option to appear in court to defend themselves from unfair evictions and unfair rental agreements. The problem, however, is that almost no renters ever show up to defend themselves in eviction court. Regarding the problem, he writes:
“Courts have shown little interest in addressing the fact that the majority of tenants facing eviction never show up. If anything, they have come to depend on this because each day brings a pile of eviction cases, and the goal of every person working in housing court, no matter where their sympathies lie, is just to get through the pile because the next day another pile will be there waiting. The principle of due process has been replaced by mere process: pushing cases through.”
It is easy to simply dismiss this issue. It is easy to complain that people being evicted are lazy, irresponsible, and should have to show up if they really care about avoiding eviction. It is easy not to feel sympathy for people who make poor decisions, who may use drugs or be unemployed, and can’t keep up with rent payments when the rest of us have to work hard and go to our jobs in order to buy groceries, pay the rent or mortgage, and keep out of debt.
However, what Desmond notes is that this is an issue of due process, a constitutional provision backed up by two Constitutional Amendments. The right to due process is so important that it is in the Constitution twice, yet it is an afterthought for people facing eviction. There are numerous reasons why tenants don’t show up to represent themselves in eviction court, and some of those reasons are technical in nature, the results of unequal power dynamics, or stem from other addressable aspects of human nature. Whatever the reason, the high rate of no-shows in court demonstrates that due process is not being upheld, that people’s constitutional rights are being violated. None of us would find it acceptable if we had to clear numerous hurdles to be afforded a constitutional right, but that is what we accept with the failures of eviction court. Throughout the book Desmond shows that many people truly do care, but that the crushing workload and a never-ending stream of low-income renters being evicted makes the process overwhelming. As the quote shows, this leads to a prioritization of getting the work done rather than upholding the rights of poor people.
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