Eviction: A Social History of Rent

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

In 2017, Jessica Fields parents and 69 of their neighbours received warning of imminent eviction. Their corporate landlord sought to demolish their affordable private rented homes and replace them with middle-class houses for sale. Together, the women of the estate set up an anti-eviction campaign to save their tenant community.

The neighbourhood was the last surviving part of a National Coal Board estate, originally built in the 1950s to house local mineworkers. It was dubbed Cardboard City because of its poor quality, prefabricated construction; houses were put up by unskilled workers in less than two weeks apiece. They were costly to build, costly to maintain and, by the 1980s, rendered defective. When the pits closed and the Coal Board needed to get rid of its housing stock, whole estates were then auctioned off to speculators heralding the financialisation of social housing and putting low-income tenants at the mercy of global investors. Renters were swindled every step of the way. But time and again tenant activists especially women have fought back.

In telling the history of Cardboard City and the wider history of housebuilding-for-rent, Eviction offers an alternative history of social housing as well as a celebration of women-led tenant activism fighting against profiteering landlords.

Reviews

This story of a community that suffered from terrible treatment at the hands of their landlord, as well as very bad conditions, is shocking. It is a story that must be told in order to prevent such exploitation from happening in the future. I hope many people in the housing world will read this book and take its lessons to heart. Brilliantly written, and told through the eyes of a resident, it is doubly powerful. This gripping book also highlights the particularly active role of women in housing and community issues. -- Anne Power, author of Cities For a Small Continent
Rooted in a deeply personal account of the residents' fight to save one condemned estate, Jessica Field's fine book charts wider, often women-led, renters' struggles and provides a powerful critique of the broader iniquities and insecurities of both private and public rental sectors. -- John Boughton, author of Municipal Dreams
Moving and enlightening. A compelling social history of rental housing in Britain, and a personal story of her family and community's fight against generations of cynical landlords. It's a lost history of decades of housing insecurity, made more powerful because it's told largely through the working class women who fought to make these communities work, and to save them from destruction. Eviction is a book to open your eyes, to make you angry, and to inspire change. -- John Grindrod, author of Concretopia
Heart-breaking and heart-warming in equal measure, Field's devastating expos of what happened to the tenants of former Coal Board housing bursts the myth of the post-war housing golden age. Combining painstaking archival research with working-class lived experience of housing insecurity and landlord exploitation, Eviction is a warning about a future of corporate Rachmanism should private equity investors get hold of social housing. Superbly written in a deeply personal way that manages to connect up one estate with so many different issues facing tenants today. -- Stuart Hodkinson, author of Safe as Houses
A compelling account of the precarious housing histories of the English working class, weaving together powerful stories of people and place. The eviction of tenants from so-called 'Cardboard City' and their efforts to resist remind us that the personal is indeed political. Drawing on firsthand on her own life, family, and activism, Fields presents a fresh perspective on temporary housing within the politics of public investment. Eviction indicates a path forward-emphasising the urgent need for secure, long-term public housing as a means to address the persistent legacies of classed, gendered, and intergenerational inequalities. A must-read. -- Professor Sarah Marie Hall, University of Manchester
An excellent and often-hidden perspective on the history of social rent in the UK. Now is the time for politicians to heed the stories of history, learn from this book and create a better housing system that puts tenant well-being at its heart -- Christa Maciver, Director of Campaigns and Social Change, Justlife

Author Bio

Jessica Field has a modern history PhD and is a Research Associate at the University of Manchester. Following her parent's eviction notice in 2017 and the community formation of #SaveOurHomesLS26, she ran the saveourhomesLS26.org campaign website and wrote for The Guardian and Red Pepper. In 2022, she won the Dawn Foster Memorial Essay Prize. This is her first book.