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" I come from a specific tradition of sociology, which is urban ethnography. "

Matthew Desmond

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" The things you're closest to are often the things you know least about. "

Matthew Desmond

" If we are going to spend the bulk of our public dollars on the affluent - at least when it comes to housing - we should own up to that decision and stop repeating the canard about this rich country being unable to afford more. "

Matthew Desmond

" There is a reason so many Americans choose to develop their net worth through homeownership: It is a proven wealth builder and savings compeller. "

Matthew Desmond

" Eviction is much more an inevitability than a result of irresponsibility. "

Matthew Desmond

" Kids increase people's risk of eviction. "

Matthew Desmond

" You do learn how to cope from those who are coping. "

Matthew Desmond

" Many times when we are talking about displacement, we talk about it within the frame of gentrification, which focuses on transitioning neighborhoods. But man, every city I've looked at, Milwaukee included, most evictions are right there, smack dab in ungentrifying, poor, segregated communities. "

Matthew Desmond

" You lose your home, you are much more likely to lose your job the year following. The reason for that comes back to the bandwidth problem: You're so focused on this event that you're making mistakes at work; you can relocate further from work, which can increase your tardiness and absenteeism and cause you to lose your job. "

Matthew Desmond

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

Matthew Desmond

" The face of America's eviction epidemic is a mom with kids. "

Matthew Desmond

" When you meet people who are spending 70, 80 percent of their income on rent, eviction becomes much more of an inevitability than the result of personal irresponsibility. "

Matthew Desmond

" What we're seeing is that even in high poverty neighborhoods, the average cost of renting is quickly approaching the total income of welfare recipients and low wage workers. "

Matthew Desmond

" I came to the realization of how essential a role housing plays in the lives of the poor. "

Matthew Desmond

" Just strictly from a business standpoint, kids are a liability to landlords, and they actually provoke evictions. "

Matthew Desmond

" There were evictions that I saw that I know I'll never forget. In one case, the sheriff and the movers came up on a house full of children. The mom had passed away, and the children had just gone on living there. And the sheriff executed the eviction order - moved the kids' stuff out on the street on a cold, rainy day. "

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

" 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

" Just as incarceration has come to define the lives of low-income black men, eviction is defining the lives of low-income black women. "

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

" 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

" Public-sector union organisers have told me about how firefighters, police officers, and nurses can no longer afford to live in the cities they serve and protect. "

Matthew Desmond

" 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. "

Matthew Desmond

" Eviction riots erupted during the Depression, though the number of poor families who faced eviction each year was a fraction of what it is today. "

Matthew Desmond

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

Matthew Desmond

" This was what a lot of us, mainly young men, did in the summers in northern Arizona. This is how I put myself through college. I fought fires in the summer, and then I went back and did it again when I went to graduate school. "

Matthew Desmond

" Evictions cause job loss. Because it's such a destabilizing, stressful event, they lose their footing in the labor market. It has big impacts on people's health, especially mental health. "

Matthew Desmond

" Differences in homeownership rates remain the prime driver of the nation's racial wealth gap. "

Matthew Desmond

" 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 poverty persists in America, it is not for lack of resources. We lack something else. "

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