“The average age of a homeless person in America is 9,” said Matthew Desmond on NPR, at the Urban Institute, and at the National Building Museum. According to ARCHITECT‘s Sara Johson, the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning book, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (Crown, 2016), was discussing two projects launched this month: a year-long exhibition at the Washington, D.C., museum and the debut of Eviction Lab, a website created by a team at Princeton University that maps eviction records from across the United States.
Inspired by Desmond’s book, the National Building Museum show combines three-dimensional infographics with a series of short films by New York–based Unfurl Productions. It combines the macro and micro: nationwide statistics combined with individual stories.
Curator Sarah Leavitt says she hopes visitors to the exhibition learn that evictions are not “an individual problem” but part of a national crisis. “On a much smaller level, I hope that they are just moved … I hope that they get a little upset and then are able to see how to turn that around—either activism, which would be great, or at least some deeper understanding of the crisis.”
