230 Quotes by Matthew Desmond

An eviction is an incredibly time consuming and stressful event.

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

Housing is absolutely essential to human flourishing. Without stable shelter, it all falls apart.

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

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.

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

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.

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.'

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