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" The standard of 'affordable' housing is that which costs roughly 30 percent or less of a family's income. Because of rising housing costs and stagnant wages, slightly more than half of all poor renting families in the country spend more than 50 percent of their income on housing costs, and at least one in four spends more than 70 percent. "

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" 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

America

Years

Writing

" The texture and hardship of poverty and eviction is something that I think left the deepest impression on me, and I hope that I try to convey a little bit of that to the reader. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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%. "

" 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. "

" You have to understand the role the landlords are playing in shaping neighborhoods, how they potentially expand or reduce inequality, how their profits are a direct result of some tenant's poverty. "

" Families, when they get a housing voucher, they move a lot less. They move into better neighborhoods. Their kids go to the same school more consistently. Their kids have more food, and they get stronger. There are massive returns. "

" 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. "

" This country has so much wealth and so much poverty, and that seemed wrong to me. 'Evicted' was my Ph.D. dissertation. "

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

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

" Eviction is part of a business model at the bottom of the market. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" 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

Same

You

" My dad was a preacher. "

Matthew Desmond

Dad

Preacher

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" Libraries are not just places where people go read a book, but places where an immigrant goes to take English lessons and where folks out of a job search for community. "

Matthew Desmond

People

Community

" Eviction affects old folks and young folks, sick people and able-bodied people, white communities and African-American communities. "

" It takes a good amount of time and money to establish a home. Eviction can erase all that. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "