Every condition exists,” Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote, “simply because someone profits by its existence. This economic exploitation is crystallized in the slum.Matthew Desmond
We have failed to fully appreciate how deeply housing is implicated in the creation of poverty.Matthew Desmond
If incarceration had come to define the lives of men from impoverished black neighborhoods, eviction was shaping the lives of women. Poor black men were locked up. Poor black women were locked out.Matthew Desmond
Eviction is a cause, not just a condition, of poverty.Matthew Desmond
Without stable shelter, everything else falls apart.Matthew Desmond
There are two freedoms at odds with each other: the freedom to profit from rents and the freedom to live in a safe and affordable home.Matthew Desmond
Between 2009 and 2011, more than 1 in 8 Milwaukee renters experienced a forced move.Matthew Desmond
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
Being a good parent, it turns out, takes a home.Matthew Desmond
People are thus forced to leave neighborhoods where they have roots and where many relationships, formal and informal, have been built, and to sever the bonds of these relationships, often with damaging consequences.Matthew Desmond
By destroying poor communities and families, eviction deepens our civic divide.Matthew Desmond
But when families finally leave poverty, they often do so through an investment in the home or the acquisition of skills and education, especially those acquired in a college setting.Matthew Desmond