“Every condition exists,” Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote, “simply because someone profits by its existence. This economic exploitation is crystallized in the slum.” Exploitation. Now, there’s a word that has been scrubbed out of the poverty debate.”
―
Matthew Desmond,
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“it is hard to argue that housing is not a fundamental human need. Decent, affordable housing should be a basic right for everybody in this country. The reason is simple: without stable shelter, everything else falls apart.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“The home is the center of life. It is a refuge from the grind of work, the pressure of school, and the menace of the streets. We say that at home, we can “be ourselves.” Everywhere else, we are someone else. At home, we remove our masks. The home is the wellspring of personhood. It is where our identity takes root and blossoms, where as children, we imagine, play, and question, and as adolescents, we retreat and try. As we grow older, we hope to settle into a place to raise a family or pursue work. When we try to understand ourselves, we often begin by considering the kind of home in which we were raised.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“If poverty persists in America, it is not for lack of resources.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“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, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“But equal treatment in an unequal society could still foster inequality. Because black men were disproportionately incarcerated and black women disproportionately evicted, uniformly denying housing to applicants with recent criminal or eviction records still had an incommensurate impact on African Americans.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“Eviction is a cause, not just a condition, of poverty.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“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, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“But it was not enough simply to perceive injustice. Mass resistance was possible only when people believed they had the collective capacity to change things. For poor people, this required identifying with the oppressed, and counting yourself among them—which was something most trailer park residents were absolutely unwilling to do.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“No one thought the poor more undeserving than the poor themselves.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“By and large, the poor do not want some small life. They don't want to game the system or eke out an existence; they want to thrive and contribute.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“The year the police called Sherrena, Wisconsin saw more than one victim per week murdered by a current or former romantic partner or relative. 10 After the numbers were released, Milwaukee’s chief of police appeared on the local news and puzzled over the fact that many victims had never contacted the police for help. A nightly news reporter summed up the chief’s views: “He believes that if police were contacted more often, that victims would have the tools to prevent fatal situations from occurring in the future.” What the chief failed to realize, or failed to reveal, was that his department’s own rules presented battered women with a devil’s bargain: keep quiet and face abuse or call the police and face eviction.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“Our cities have become unaffordable to our poorest families, and this problem is leaving a deep and jagged scar on our next generation.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“Often, evicted families also lose the opportunity to benefit from public housing because Housing Authorities count evictions and unpaid debt as strikes when reviewing applications. And so people who have the greatest need for housing assistance—the rent-burdened and evicted—are systematically denied it.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“The rent eats first.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“The profits were staggering. In 1966, a Chicago landlord told a court that on a single property he had made $42,500 in rent but paid only $2,400 in maintenance. When accused of making excessive profits, the landlord simply replied, “That’s why I bought the building.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“We have the money. We’ve just made choices about how to spend it. Over the years, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have restricted housing aid to the poor but expanded it to the affluent in the form of tax benefits for homeowners. 57 Today, housing-related tax expenditures far outpace those for housing assistance. In 2008, the year Arleen was evicted from Thirteenth Street, federal expenditures for direct housing assistance totaled less than $40.2 billion, but homeowner tax benefits exceeded $171 billion. That number, $171 billion, was equivalent to the 2008 budgets for the Department of Education, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Agriculture combined. 58 Each year, we spend three times what a universal housing voucher program is estimated to cost (in total ) on homeowner benefits, like the mortgage-interest deduction and the capital-gains exclusion. Most federal housing subsidies benefit families with six-figure incomes. 59 If we are going to spend the bulk of our public dollars on the affluent—at least when it comes to housing—we should own up to that decision and stop repeating the politicians’ canard about one of the richest countries on the planet being unable to afford doing more. If poverty persists in America, it is not for lack of resources.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“The distance between grinding poverty and even stable poverty could be so vast that those at the bottom had little hope of climbing out even if they pinched every penny. So they chose not to. Instead, they tried to survive in color, to season the suffering with pleasure. They would get a little high or have a drink or do a bit of gambling or acquire a television. They might buy lobster on food stamps.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“Poverty was a relationship, I thought, involving poor and rich people alike. To understand poverty, I needed to understand that relationship. This sent me searching for a process that bound poor and rich people together in mutual dependence and struggle. Eviction was such a process.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“it is hard to argue that housing is not a fundamental human need. Decent, affordable housing should be a basic right for everybody in this country. The reason is simple: without stable shelter, everything else falls apart.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“The home is the center of life. It is a refuge from the grind of work, the pressure of school, and the menace of the streets. We say that at home, we can “be ourselves.” Everywhere else, we are someone else. At home, we remove our masks. The home is the wellspring of personhood. It is where our identity takes root and blossoms, where as children, we imagine, play, and question, and as adolescents, we retreat and try. As we grow older, we hope to settle into a place to raise a family or pursue work. When we try to understand ourselves, we often begin by considering the kind of home in which we were raised.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“If poverty persists in America, it is not for lack of resources.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“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, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“But equal treatment in an unequal society could still foster inequality. Because black men were disproportionately incarcerated and black women disproportionately evicted, uniformly denying housing to applicants with recent criminal or eviction records still had an incommensurate impact on African Americans.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“Eviction is a cause, not just a condition, of poverty.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“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, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“But it was not enough simply to perceive injustice. Mass resistance was possible only when people believed they had the collective capacity to change things. For poor people, this required identifying with the oppressed, and counting yourself among them—which was something most trailer park residents were absolutely unwilling to do.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“No one thought the poor more undeserving than the poor themselves.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“By and large, the poor do not want some small life. They don't want to game the system or eke out an existence; they want to thrive and contribute.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“The year the police called Sherrena, Wisconsin saw more than one victim per week murdered by a current or former romantic partner or relative. 10 After the numbers were released, Milwaukee’s chief of police appeared on the local news and puzzled over the fact that many victims had never contacted the police for help. A nightly news reporter summed up the chief’s views: “He believes that if police were contacted more often, that victims would have the tools to prevent fatal situations from occurring in the future.” What the chief failed to realize, or failed to reveal, was that his department’s own rules presented battered women with a devil’s bargain: keep quiet and face abuse or call the police and face eviction.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“Our cities have become unaffordable to our poorest families, and this problem is leaving a deep and jagged scar on our next generation.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“Often, evicted families also lose the opportunity to benefit from public housing because Housing Authorities count evictions and unpaid debt as strikes when reviewing applications. And so people who have the greatest need for housing assistance—the rent-burdened and evicted—are systematically denied it.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“The rent eats first.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“The profits were staggering. In 1966, a Chicago landlord told a court that on a single property he had made $42,500 in rent but paid only $2,400 in maintenance. When accused of making excessive profits, the landlord simply replied, “That’s why I bought the building.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“We have the money. We’ve just made choices about how to spend it. Over the years, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have restricted housing aid to the poor but expanded it to the affluent in the form of tax benefits for homeowners. 57 Today, housing-related tax expenditures far outpace those for housing assistance. In 2008, the year Arleen was evicted from Thirteenth Street, federal expenditures for direct housing assistance totaled less than $40.2 billion, but homeowner tax benefits exceeded $171 billion. That number, $171 billion, was equivalent to the 2008 budgets for the Department of Education, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Agriculture combined. 58 Each year, we spend three times what a universal housing voucher program is estimated to cost (in total ) on homeowner benefits, like the mortgage-interest deduction and the capital-gains exclusion. Most federal housing subsidies benefit families with six-figure incomes. 59 If we are going to spend the bulk of our public dollars on the affluent—at least when it comes to housing—we should own up to that decision and stop repeating the politicians’ canard about one of the richest countries on the planet being unable to afford doing more. If poverty persists in America, it is not for lack of resources.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“The distance between grinding poverty and even stable poverty could be so vast that those at the bottom had little hope of climbing out even if they pinched every penny. So they chose not to. Instead, they tried to survive in color, to season the suffering with pleasure. They would get a little high or have a drink or do a bit of gambling or acquire a television. They might buy lobster on food stamps.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“Poverty was a relationship, I thought, involving poor and rich people alike. To understand poverty, I needed to understand that relationship. This sent me searching for a process that bound poor and rich people together in mutual dependence and struggle. Eviction was such a process.” ― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
