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" All homeowners in America may deduct mortgage interest on their first and second homes. "

Matthew Desmond

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" When I left Milwaukee, and I had all these stories. I felt so responsible for people. It's a heck of a thing to do, to try to write someone's story. "

Matthew Desmond

" If I wrote in Jacob Riis' time, I'd be writing about teeming slums in our cities and kids dying of tuberculosis or outhouses in Philadelphia or kids losing their toes because they were living in homes without heat. He took on a battle in 'The Battle with the Slums' - and we won. "

Matthew Desmond

" Even growing up the way I did, I was shocked by the level of poverty I saw as a college student. I thought the best way to understand it was to get close to it on the ground level. "

Matthew Desmond

" I had come to college believing in a story that if you worked hard, the American dream was reachable. "

Matthew Desmond

" When I was confronted with just the bare facts of poverty and inequality in America, it always disturbed and confused me. "

Matthew Desmond

" The cost of evictions varies a lot, but it could be for landlords an expensive process as well. Among the costs for landlords as well is the emotional costs of an eviction. "

Matthew Desmond

" Do we believe housing is a right and that affordable housing is part of what it should mean to be an American? I say yes. "

Matthew Desmond

" Tenants don't have any right to court-appointed attorneys in civil court, so they're either facing their landlord - or his or her attorney - alone, or they just don't show up. That reflects a severe power imbalance. "

Matthew Desmond

" Eviction reveals people's vulnerability and desperation as well as their ingenuity and guts. "

Matthew Desmond

" Home is the center of life. It's the wellspring of personhood. It's where we say we're ourselves. "

Matthew Desmond

" When I talk to booksellers, they tell me how hard it is to hand-sell some of my books because I do keep popping around. "

Matthew Desmond

" When you ask people why they were evicted, the big reason is nonpayment of rent. They can't afford to keep a roof over their heads. Utilities are a big part of the story too, while the third leg on the table is the lack of government help with housing. "

Matthew Desmond

" 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. "

Matthew Desmond

" If incarceration had come to define the lives of men from impoverished black neighborhoods, eviction was shaping the lives of women. Poor black men were locked up. Poor black women were locked out. "

Matthew Desmond

" Most cities don't have a just cause eviction law. Most allow no cause evictions, as well as evictions for nonpayment. "

Matthew Desmond

" In a way, no one's harder on the poor than the poor themselves. "

Matthew Desmond

" I think that we value fairness in this country. We value equal opportunity. Without a stable home, those ideals really fall apart. "

Matthew Desmond

" I left college with a deep sense that I needed to understand poverty more. "

Matthew Desmond

" I don't think that you can address poverty unless you address the lack of affordable housing in the cities. "

Matthew Desmond

" You see one eviction, and you're overcome, but then there's another one and another one and another one. "

Matthew Desmond

" Most Americans think that the typical low - income family lives in public housing or gets housing assistance. The opposite is true. "

Matthew Desmond

" I teach at Harvard, and focusing on understanding this problem on a national level is a big priority of mine right now - where evictions are going up and down, what cities are actually instituting policies that work, what housing insecurity is doing to our cities, neighbourhoods, our kids. "

Matthew Desmond

" The face of the eviction epidemic is moms and kids, especially poor moms from predominantly Latino and African American neighborhoods. "

Matthew Desmond

" African American women, and moms in particular, are evicted at disproportionately high rates. "

Matthew Desmond

African American

" I love Milwaukee, the rust belt. It's a very special part of America that's full of promise but also full of pain, where poverty is acute. "

Matthew Desmond

" A fire in a forest is alive with terror and power. "

Matthew Desmond

" Losing a home sends families to shelters, abandoned houses, and the street. "

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

" Ours was not always a nation of homeowners; the New Deal fashioned it so, particularly through the G.I. Bill of Rights. "

Matthew Desmond

" 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. "

Matthew Desmond