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

Matthew Desmond

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" I see myself writing in the tradition of urban ethnography and in the tradition of the sociology of poverty. "

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

" 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

" 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

" 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. "

Matthew Desmond

" National data on evictions aren't collected, although national data on foreclosures are. And so if anyone wants to, kind of, get to know any statistical research about evictions, they have to really dig in the annals of legal records. "

Matthew Desmond

" 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.' "

Matthew Desmond

" I saw people get fired after their eviction. But when I found that if you get evicted, your chances of losing your job increase by 20 percent, that's when it really hit home for me. "

Matthew Desmond

" Housing being a top-order issue for cities is something that's not trivial. "

Matthew Desmond

" 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

" I'm from a small town, and I thought I would be a lawyer. "

Matthew Desmond

" Without the ability to plant roots and invest in your community or your school - because you're paying 60, 70, 80 percent of your income to rent - and eviction becomes something of an inevitability to you, it denies you certain freedoms. "

Matthew Desmond

" A lot of the stories about urban America tend to be written on the margins. We focus a lot on these big global cities - New York, San Francisco - or we focus on cities that are having the toughest time - Detroit, Newark, Camden. "

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

" I want my work to influence public conversation, to turn heads, and to bear witness to this problem that's raging in our cities. If journalism helps me with that, I'll draw on journalism... and I'm not going to worry too much if academics get troubled over that distinction. "

Matthew Desmond

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

Matthew Desmond

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

Matthew Desmond

" There are moving companies specializing in evictions, their crews working all day, every weekday. "

Matthew Desmond

" 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. "

Matthew Desmond

" When I want to understand a problem, I want to understand it from the ground level. "

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

" You can get out of maintaining property at code if the family is behind on rent. "

Matthew Desmond

" Home is where children find safety and security, where we find our identities, where citizenship starts. It usually starts with believing you're part of a community, and that is essential to having a stable home. "

Matthew Desmond

" Hundreds of data-mining companies sell landlords tenant-screening reports that list past evictions and court filings. "

Matthew Desmond

" 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

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

Matthew Desmond

African American

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

Matthew Desmond

" I have always been really troubled by the amount of poverty in America. Americans are matched in their rich democracy with the depth and expanse of poverty. That's really always unsettled me. "

Matthew Desmond

" 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. "

Matthew Desmond

" I see myself working in the tradition of sociology and journalism that tries to bear witness to poverty. "

Matthew Desmond