For too many in Kansas City and across the country, the challenge of keeping up with the rising costs of food, fuel, and other consumables is only the beginning. They’re at risk of losing the roof over their heads. More than 10,000 tenants have been hit with eviction filings in Kansas City the past two years – with many more forced to move in actions outside the courts.

Their harrowing experiences are illuminated in this immersive traveling exhibition through photographs, video storytelling, and spatial elements. A pallet of household goods typifies the personal effects removed from a home during eviction and piled ignominiously on the lawn or side of the street. Four different living spaces are discombobulated – walls not extending floor to ceiling, wallpaper and outlets on the outside rather than the inside – suggesting the disruptive impact of eviction or even its prospect.

Infographics spell out the scope of what many see as a growing social scourge.

The exhibition, produced by the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., is inspired by Matthew Desmond’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. Too expansive for either of the Central Library’s two formal galleries, the exhibition sprawls across the first-floor grand foyer, Kirk Hall.