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Eviction:A Social History of Rent
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An alternative history of housing in post-war Britain – a cautionary tale of rent, precarity, and working-class resistance
Grounded in personal experience, Eviction uncovers a hidden history of housing injustice and working-class resistance in what has become a perennial battleground for social conflict in modern Britain.
In 2017, Jessica Field’s parents and more than a hundred of their neighbours received warning of imminent eviction. Their corporate landlord intended to demolish their affordable, privately rented homes to replace them with middle-class houses for sale. Led by the women of the estate, tenants launched an anti-eviction campaign to save their close-knit community from destruction.
The neighbourhood was the last remnant of a 1950s National Coal Board estate constructed to house local miners. When the coal industry declined in the 1970s, whole estates were auctioned off to speculators. Low-income tenants were at the mercy of global investors. Houses were left to rot. Rents soared. Tenants were exploited every step of the way. Yet time and again, tenant activists – especially women – fought back.
Eviction is a history of the British housing crisis in microcosm.
Reviews
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Heart-breaking and heart-warming in equal measure, Field's devastating exposé 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.
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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.
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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