Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty And Profit In The American City Quotes
One's sovereignty over the land is expressed most powerfully in the act of banishment. Perhaps the first eviction recorded in human history was Adam and Eve's.
No one thought the poor more undeserving than the poor themselves.
Eviction is a cause, not just a condition, of poverty.
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.
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.
It was not that low-income renters didn’t know their rights. They just knew those rights would cost them.
Most poor people in America were like Arleen: they did not live in public housing or apartments subsidized by vouchers. Three in four families who qualified for assistance received nothing.
Today, the majority of poor renting families in America spend over half of their income on housing, and at least one in four dedicates over 70 percent to paying the rent and keeping the lights on.
Families with children were turned away in as many as 7 in 10 housing searches.
In 1930, the death rate for Milwaukee’s blacks was nearly 60 percent higher than the citywide rate, due in large part to poor housing conditions.
Our cities have become unaffordable to our poorest families, and this problem is leaving a deep and jagged scar on our next generation.