Matthew Desmond Quotes
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We can start with housing, the sturdiest of footholds for economic mobility. A national affordable housing program would be an anti-poverty effort, human capital investment, community improvement plan, and public health initiative all rolled into one.
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If eviction has these massive consequences that we all pay for, a very smart use of public funds would be to invest in legal services for folks facing eviction.
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A lot of us who grew up in the country, hunting and fishing, being very familiar with the woods and dirt roads, have the skill set you need to fight fire.
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The church should lead on issues of housing and affordability.
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If we take a hard look at what poverty is, its nature, it's not pretty - it's full of trauma. And we're able to accept trauma with certain groups, like with soldiers, for instance - we understand that they face trauma and that trauma can be connected to things like depression or acts of violence later on in life.
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Poverty is a relationship that involves a lot of folks, rich and poor alike. I was looking for something that brought a lot of different people in a room. Eviction does that, embroils landlords and tenants, lawyers and social workers.
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Poverty is not just a sad accident, but it's also a result of the fact that some people make a lot of money off low-income families and directly contribute to their poverty.
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Evictions used to be rare in this country. They used to draw crowds. There are scenes in literature where you can come upon an eviction - like, in 'Invisible Man' there's the famous eviction scene in Harlem, and people are gathered around, and they move the family back in.
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When I was confronted with just the bare facts of poverty and inequality in America, it always disturbed and confused me.
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Trying to learn from communities and engage with policy makers and community organizers all across the country is really important to me.
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You meet folks who are funny and really smart and persistent and loving that are confronting this thing we call poverty, which is just a shorthand for this way of life that holds you underwater. And you just wonder what our country would be if we allowed these people to flourish and reach their full potential.
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There is a reason so many Americans choose to develop their net worth through homeownership: It is a proven wealth builder and savings compeller.
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Home is the wellspring of personhood, where our identity takes root; where civic life begins. America is supposed to be a place where you can better yourself, your family, and your community.
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The home is the center of life - a refuge from the grind of work, pressure of school, menace of the streets, a place to be ourselves.
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Eviction reveals people's vulnerability and desperation as well as their ingenuity and guts.
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You have to understand the role the landlords are playing in shaping neighborhoods, how they potentially expand or reduce inequality, how their profits are a direct result of some tenant's poverty.
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In a way, no one's harder on the poor than the poor themselves.
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Housing is absolutely essential to human flourishing. Without stable shelter, it all falls apart.
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I see myself writing in the tradition of urban ethnography and in the tradition of the sociology of poverty.
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When you fight fires for a few seasons, you know what to expect. Your heart doesn't race as much as it did.
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Families who get evicted tend to live in worse housing than they did before, and they live in neighborhoods with higher poverty rates and higher crime rates than they did before.
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I felt that writing about peoples' lives was a heck of a responsibility, and I wanted to know them in a deep way.
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A lot flows from the question: Is having decent, stable housing part of what it means to live in this country? And I think we should answer 'yes.'
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Since evictions go through court, it has a record that comes with it, and many landlords that I spend time with use that as a big screening mechanism. And that's really the reason, we think, families are pushed into worse housing and worse neighborhoods after their evictions.