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" When you fight fires for a few seasons, you know what to expect. Your heart doesn't race as much as it did. "
Matthew Desmond
Heart
Know
Race
Related Quotes:
" 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
Summer
School
Myself
" 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
High
Poverty
Average
" 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. "
Matthew Desmond
Time
Car
Country
" 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. "
Matthew Desmond
Face
Depression
Violence
" 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. "
Matthew Desmond
Food
Stronger
School
" African American women, and moms in particular, are evicted at disproportionately high rates. "
Matthew Desmond
African American
Women
High
" You can get out of maintaining property at code if the family is behind on rent. "
Matthew Desmond
Out
Rent
Behind
" 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
Before
Housing
Live
" Differences in homeownership rates remain the prime driver of the nation's racial wealth gap. "
Matthew Desmond
Racial
Differences
Gap
" 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
Love
Special
Poverty
" You do learn how to cope from those who are coping. "
Matthew Desmond
Who
Learn
Those
" 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. "
Matthew Desmond
You
Poverty
Role
" 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
Children
Know
Street
" Eviction comes with a record, too, and just as a criminal record can bar you from receiving certain benefits or getting a foothold in the labor market, the record of eviction comes with consequences as well. It can bar you from getting good housing in a good neighborhood. "
Matthew Desmond
Good
Consequences
Housing
" 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
Costs
Well
Process
" 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
Legal
Connection
Business
" I wanted to write a book about poverty that wasn't only about the poor. I was looking for some sort of narrative device, a phenomenon that would allow me to draw in a lot of different players. I was like, 'Shoot, eviction does that.' "
Matthew Desmond
Me
Looking
Like
" 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
Reason
Through
Wealth
" 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%. "
Matthew Desmond
Lost
Black
Family
" 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
Resistance
Three
Only
" 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
Life
Community
Identity
" No moral code or ethical principle, no piece of scripture or holy teaching, can be summoned to defend what we have allowed our country to become. "
Matthew Desmond
Country
Principle
Moral
" I don't think we can fix poverty without fixing housing, and I don't think we can address housing without understanding landlords. "
Matthew Desmond
Poverty
Think
Understanding
" I started a student organization that was basically designed to connect students with homeless folks. We visited them and sometimes brought food, but mostly we were there for swapping stories. "
Matthew Desmond
Homeless
Food
Student
" 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
Time
America
Big
" Since evictions go through court, it has a record that comes with it, and many landlords that I spend time with use that as a big screening mechanism. And that's really the reason, we think, families are pushed into worse housing and worse neighborhoods after their evictions. "
Matthew Desmond
Time
Think
Reason
" It is very rare in the life of an intellectual to see your support network show up all at once. "
Matthew Desmond
See
Intellectual
Life
" If you just catalog the effects eviction has on people's live and neighborhoods, it's pretty troubling. "
Matthew Desmond
Just
Catalog
You
" My dad was a preacher. "
Matthew Desmond
Dad
Preacher
" 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. "
Matthew Desmond
Health
Improvement
Community