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" Some white Milwakeeans still referred to the North side as 'the cire', as they did in the 1960s, and if they ventured into it, they saw street after street of sagging duplexes, fading murals, twenty-four hour daycares, and corner stores with 'WIC Accepted Here' signs. "

Matthew Desmond

Signs

Here

Street

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

" 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. "

" Between 2007 and 2010, the average white family experienced an 11% reduction in wealth, but the average black family lost 31% of its wealth. The average Hispanic family lost 44.7%. "

" 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. "

" 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

Will

Lack

" We have failed to fully appreciate how deeply housing is implicated in the creation of poverty. "

" 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. "

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

" It is very rare in the life of an intellectual to see your support network show up all at once. "

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

" Fire itself is very beautiful, and there's an attachment to fire that firefighters have. "

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

" In college, when I was kind of confronted with facts and figures about inequality in America, a big impulse I had was to go hang out with homeless people around my university and hear them out and understand their situation from their perspective. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" Child Protection Services can get all up in your business if you have kids. Just strictly from a business standpoint, kids are a liability to landlords, and they actually provoke evictions. "

Matthew Desmond

Business

Protection

" The high cost of housing is crushing poor families and sending them to a state of desperation. "

" When you fight fires for a few seasons, you know what to expect. Your heart doesn't race as much as it did. "

" Why young men from the country become firefighters is hard to explain to people who are not from the country. For most of us, it's not about the rush, which fades with time, or the paycheck. We could earn more working for the railroad or a car dealership. I figure it's about the land. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Eviction causes loss. You lose not only your home but also your possessions, which are thrown onto the curb or taken by movers, and often you can't keep up payments. "

" 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

Potential

America

" If you look at the American Household Survey, the last time we did that in 2013, renters in over 2.8 million homes thought they would be evicted soon. "

" American greatness can be further unlocked if opportunity is expanded to all people within its borders. "

" 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. "

" You lose your home, you lose your community, you lose your school, you lose your stuff. "