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Between 2009 and 2011, more than one in eight Milwaukee renters were displaced involuntarily, whether by formal or informal eviction, landlord foreclosure, or building condemnation.
Matthew Desmond -
If I wrote in Michael Harrington's time, roughly 50 years later when he published 'The Other America', I'd still be writing about poverty and also entrenched racial injustice.
Matthew Desmond
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In February 1932, the 'Times' published an account of community resistance to the eviction of three families in the Bronx, observing, 'Probably because of the cold, the crowd numbered only 1,000.'
Matthew Desmond -
Differences in homeownership rates remain the prime driver of the nation's racial wealth gap.
Matthew Desmond -
There is a deep connection, when we're talking about certain market forces and a legal structure that inhibits low or moderate income families from getting ahead. Eviction is part of a business model at the bottom of the market.
Matthew Desmond -
Poverty was a relationship, I thought, involving poor and rich people alike.
Matthew Desmond -
You do learn how to cope from those who are coping.
Matthew Desmond -
Moms that get evicted are depressed and have higher rates of depressive symptoms two years later. That has to affect their interactions with their kids and their sense of happiness. You add all that together, and it's just really obvious to me that eviction is a cause, not just a condition, of poverty.
Matthew Desmond
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Since the publication of 'Evicted', I have had countless conversations with concerned families across America. Teachers in under-served communities have told me about high classroom turnover rates, which hinder students' ability to reach their full potential.
Matthew Desmond -
It takes a good amount of time and money to establish a home. Eviction can erase all that.
Matthew Desmond -
I'm from a small town, and I thought I would be a lawyer.
Matthew Desmond -
If we continue to tolerate this level of poverty in our cities, and go along with eviction as commonplace in poor neighborhoods, it's not for a lack of resources. It will be a lack of something else.
Matthew Desmond -
I think there are ways that graduate students can fact-check their work. I think there are ways that we can do this that don't require massive amounts of resources.
Matthew Desmond -
Eviction affects old folks and young folks, sick people and able-bodied people, white communities and African-American communities.
Matthew Desmond
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Fire itself is very beautiful, and there's an attachment to fire that firefighters have.
Matthew Desmond -
Eviction comes with a record. Just like a criminal record can hurt you in the jobs market, eviction can hurt you in the housing market. A lot of landlords turn folks away who have an eviction, and a lot of public housing authorities do the same.
Matthew Desmond -
If poverty persists in America, it is not for lack of resources. We lack something else.
Matthew Desmond -
Ours was not always a nation of homeowners; the New Deal fashioned it so, particularly through the G.I. Bill of Rights.
Matthew Desmond -
You lose your home, you lose your community, you lose your school, you lose your stuff.
Matthew Desmond -
If we take a hard look at what poverty is, its nature, it's not pretty - it's full of trauma.
Matthew Desmond
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I wanted to write a book about poverty that wasn't only about the poor. I was looking for some sort of narrative device, a phenomenon that would allow me to draw in a lot of different players. I was like, 'Shoot, eviction does that.'
Matthew Desmond -
I think I've read all of W.E.B. Du Bois, which is a lot. He started off with comprehensive field work in Philadelphia, publishing a book in 1899 called 'The Philadelphia Negro'. It was this wonderful combination of clear statistical data and ethnographic data.
Matthew Desmond -
Substandard housing was a blow to your psychological health, not only because things like dampness, mold, and overcrowding could bring about depression but also because of what living in awful conditions told you about yourself.
Matthew Desmond -
Young mothers who apply for housing assistance in our nation's capital literally could be grandmothers by the time their application is reviewed.
Matthew Desmond