At the height of the national housing crisis, there exists no book-length, social-scientific treatment of eviction. Even before the crisis, thousands of Americans were forcibly removed from their homes each year, a traumatic experience linked to homelessness, job loss, and suicide. With the sharp deterioration of the housing market, the dearth of sociological research on evictions no longer marks a mere scholarly lacuna but increasingly hampers the informed design of suitable policy interventions. This study aims to fill that gap. Employing survey-based and ethnographic methods to study tenants and landlords living and working in inner-city Milwaukee, it explores some of the causes, dynamics, and consequences of eviction, thereby providing a unique glimpse into the structures and practices of poor neighborhoods and the intricate workings of the low-cost housing market. A thorough analysis of eviction, its antecedents, consequences, and social ramifications, not only will advance the sociological understanding of inequality, it also will provide policy-relevant insights into the central role of housing with respect to urban poverty.

Ethnography of Eviction in the Inner City. - From May to September 2008, I lived in a poor, predominantly white neighborhood in Milwaukee, a trailer park dubbed "The Shame of the South Side" by the news media. Since October 2008, I have lived in a poor, predominately black neighborhood, where I plan to stay until my fieldwork draws to a close around August 2009. This study's ethnography is methodologically unique in that it endorses the primacy of social relations by taking as its scientific object, not a community or group of people, as is the convention, but the complex process of eviction. This requires spending time with a wide variety of actors involved in the process, including property owners, city inspectors, building managers, social workers, lawyers, non-evicted tenants, evicted tenants, and the latter's family members and friends. Evicting landlords and evicted tenants, however, constitute the core ethnographic sample. With respect to the landlords, I have walked in their footsteps as closely as possible, helping them repair their properties, watching them negotiate with tenants, going with them as they hand out eviction notices, talking with them about how they decide whom to evict, and following them in court as they defend their case. With respect to tenants facing eviction, I have asked them to invite me into the intimacies of their lives and have followed them through the eviction process, from the initial termination of tenancy to the temporary homelessness brought about by eviction.

The Milwaukee Area Renters Study. - The Milwaukee Area Renters Study (MARS) is a survey of tenants in Milwaukee's low-income private housing sector. Administered by the University of Wisconsin Survey Center, the MARS survey will collect questionnaires from approximately 1,000 households, administered via in-person interviews. The study draws on a multi-stage stratified probability sample of Milwaukee households selected from low-income neighborhoods. The survey will collect data on tenants' current housing situations, neighborhood characteristics, civic engagement, material hardship and social suffering, and social networks. It also will compile a household roster for all adults and children in the household. The bulk of the survey collects a two-year residential history from all respondents. This housing history module will ask renters about previous housing conditions, rental behavior, landlords and building managers, and household rosters; it also will document the number of moves each tenant has made in the previous two years as well as the reasons for those moves. Not only will the MARS study collect data on the causes and consequences of eviction, it also will provide useful information about urban poverty, inner-city neighborhoods, the low-income housing market, and social networks.

The Interplay of Ethnographic and Survey Data. - The two primary methods employed in this study, ethnography and survey research, will inform each other in several important ways. Insights about the eviction process and the dynamics of low-income housing - including the ways in which poor renters understand eviction, housing, and other aspects of their lives - the harvest of participant observation - have been incorporated in the survey. While the ethnography will inform the development of survey questions and will provide information about social mechanisms, housing dynamics, and everyday interactions, the survey will determine if patterns observed on the ground level are also observed at the aggregate level. The survey also will allow me to make statistically meaningful comparisons that connect attributes with outcomes; this will be crucial when evaluating the causes and consequences of eviction.

Funding. - This dissertation has received grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Institute for Research of Poverty, the National Science Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the Ford Foundation, the University of Wisconsin System Institute for Race and Ethnicity, and the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy.