If Trump really wanted to make America great again, he would tackle the US housing crisis nobody wants to talk about

Chronically depressed, single mother Arleen is a character in a book whose plight and suffering I can’t even begin to try and comprehend as I sit at my desk in west London.

Together with her two young children, Arleen has lived in and out of shelters, been evicted from houses that would probably be considered unfit for human habitation, had her welfare benefits slashed for missing appointments, been robbed at gunpoint and had all her worldly possessions stripped from her.

She’s battling to feed her small family and cat on the $20 (£14.50) a month she has left after footing the bill for her ramshackle lodgings. At one point, child welfare temporarily takes her two boys away. The cat dies. She has to choose between paying for accommodation and covering the cost of her sister’s funeral. Rent for one of the many flats she lives in eats up more than 95 per cent of her welfare cheque, so she can’t afford to keep the lights on.

Arleen’s story is not fiction. It’s not even rare. It’s real and it’s happening every day in what’s meant to be one of the world’s most developed countries – just as that same country’s golf-obsessed, game-show-host-turned-businessman-turned-President promises to Make America Great Again.

I read the painfully gripping story of Arleen’s distress and those of seven other families in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the days leading up to the anniversary of Trump’s presidency and found it deeply unsettling, not least because our general awareness of the grim issues addressed appears so deficient.

Evicted – deservedly the winner of a Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction last year – was on Barack Obama’s much-publicised list of favourite books from 2017. It aggressively challenges the widespread belief that poverty stems from a lack of hard work, and that destitution is a condition reserved for crazy people and drug addicts. For people who aren’t like us.

Yes, the hardship of the characters in the book does lead many of them to abuse drugs or alcohol and some do suffer from mental illness, but they are not lesser humans because of it. They are the faces of a tragic epidemic that is rampant but rarely mentioned, growing but conveniently glossed over, and one that the bolshie, immodest President of the free world must address if he really does want to accomplish any semblance of improvement for real Americans.

Matthew Desmond, an acclaimed academic and currently professor of sociology at Princeton University, wrote a paper laying bare the extent of the problems that are only getting worse in 2015. His research showed that five years ago, one in eight poor renting families in the US could not pay all of their rent. That’s broadly the same proportion who said that they expected to be evicted soon.

Milwaukee, a city of roughly 105,000 renting households, sees around 16,000 adults and children evicted in an average year, which equates to 16 eviction cases every day, according to Desmond. But other cities are suffering too, even affluent metropolises. Low-income black women are the hardest hit. Desmond found that women living in black neighbourhoods in Milwaukee represent less than 10 per cent of the population but account for almost a third of all evictions.

Children don’t appear to shield adults from eviction either. Tragically, the opposite is often true. If a tenant who appears in eviction court lives with children, that person’s odds of receiving an eviction judgment almost triple, Desmond found, and that’s even after taking into account factors such as how much is owed to the landlord and income.

The author explains that women who are victims of domestic abuse often refuse to turn to authorities, fearful that their cry for help will be considered a disturbance and therefore just another excuse for a landlord to evict them. Others don’t complain about unsanitary conditions, cockroach infestations, mould and a lack of running water. A permanent roof over their heads is already more than many of them dare to dream of.

The consequences of this eviction epidemic are severe and sweeping. Homelessness is the most obvious, but also – as mentioned above – depression and anxiety, substance abuse and crime, poor education, unemployment and, tragically too often, suicide.

At his inauguration last year, Donald Trump promised that every decision from the White House under his watch – “on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs” – would be “made to benefit American workers and American families”.

He said that from then on, it would be “America First” and that his priority was to protect the country’s borders “from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies, and destroying our jobs”. He said that he would lead the country to “great prosperity and strength” and that America would “start winning again”.

“Winning,” he emphasised, “like never before.”

By any stretch of the imagination, the scenes in Milwaukee and across the US are as far from an image of victory as is possible. Trump’s focus on protectionism, tax cuts, the stock market and the strength of the dollar are reflective of his total inability to relate even in the smallest way to the poorest populations living in this rich but abused country. Sadly, many of those suffering from the housing crisis no one likes to talk about will have been convinced by Trump’s rhetoric on privileging the American worker and returning their country to a mythical affluent greatness – and there’s little to no chance of them reaping any benefit from his presidency.

It may not be as pleasant as a stroll across the green, but it’s President Trump’s duty to address the genesis of so much socioeconomic agony. Making America great again may be a tall order. But making America humane again would certainly be a very good start.