Matthew Desmond Quotes - Page 2

American - Sociologist

When I was confronted with just the bare facts of poverty and inequality in America, it always disturbed and confused me.

Matthew Desmond

Me Confused Poverty Facts

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

School You Community Roots

An eviction is an incredibly time consuming and stressful event.

Matthew Desmond

Time Event Stressful Consuming

Poverty is a relationship that involves a lot of folks, rich and poor alike. I was looking for something that brought a lot of different people in a room. Eviction does that, embroils landlords and tenants, lawyers and social workers.

Matthew Desmond

Relationship Looking People Rich

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.

Matthew Desmond

Man City Poor Talking

I met a landlord who will pay you to move at the end of the week and let you use his van. That's a really nice kind of eviction. I met a landlord who will take your door off. There are 101 ways to move a family out.

Matthew Desmond

Family You Door End

Everywhere else, we are someone else, but at home, we remove our masks.

Matthew Desmond

Home Someone Our Remove

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.

Matthew Desmond

Sad Money Result People

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

Matthew Desmond

People Sick White Young

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

Poverty High Seeing Welfare

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

Family Black White Lost

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

Matthew Desmond

Good Home Time Money

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

White Street Here Side

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

Myself Summer School Men

My dad was a preacher.

Matthew Desmond

A lot of us who grew up in the country, hunting and fishing, being very familiar with the woods and dirt roads, have the skill set you need to fight fire.

Matthew Desmond

Fire Roads Fight You

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

Matthew Desmond

Problem Understand Want Ground

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

Matthew Desmond

Small Thought Lawyer Small Town

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

Matthew Desmond

Me Poverty Wealth Country

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 Pain Poverty Special

I left college with a deep sense that I needed to understand poverty more.

Matthew Desmond

College Poverty Deep Understand

The poor don't want some small life. They don't want to game the system. They want to contribute, and they want to thrive. But poverty reduces people born for better things.

Matthew Desmond

Life Game People Small

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

Matthew Desmond

Face Poor American Kids

You see one eviction, and you're overcome, but then there's another one and another one and another one.

Matthew Desmond

You See Overcome Then

Even growing up the way I did, I was shocked by the level of poverty I saw as a college student. I thought the best way to understand it was to get close to it on the ground level.

Matthew Desmond

Best Thought College Poverty

Poor families are living above their means, in apartments they cannot afford. The thing is, those apartments are already at the bottom of the market.

Matthew Desmond

Poor Living Bottom Cannot

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