Evictionland: More and More Americans Experience Eviction, and Gentrification is Partly to Blame
In this essay supported by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, Joseph Williams investigates the increasingly deft mechanisms at work evicting lower-income apartment dwellers in rapidly gentrifying cities, while chronicling his own descent from white collar Politico reporter living in a luxury apartment, to jobless, homeless man.
My Life as a Retail Worker: Nasty, Brutish, and Poor
After veteran reporter Joseph Williams lost his job, he found employment in a sporting-goods store. In a personal essay, he recalls his struggles with challenges millions of Americans return to day after day:
My plunge into poverty happened in an instant. I never saw it coming.
Then again, there was no reason to feel particularly vulnerable. Two years ago, I was a political reporter at Politico, and I spent my days covering the back-and-forth of presidential politics. I had access to the White House because of my reporting beat, and I was a regular commentator on MSNBC. My career had been on an upward trajectory for 30 years, and at age 50 I still anticipated a long career.
