Matthew Desmond

Exploitation. Now, there's a word that has been scrubbed out of the poverty debate.

Just as incarceration has come to define the lives of low-income black men, eviction is defining the lives of low-income black women.

We have failed to fully appreciate how deeply housing is implicated in the creation of poverty.

Poverty was a relationship, I thought, involving poor and rich people alike.

A lot flows from the question: Is having decent, stable housing part of what it means to live in this country? And I think we should answer 'yes.'

I see myself working in the tradition of sociology and journalism that tries to bear witness to poverty.

You have to understand the role the landlords are playing in shaping neighborhoods, how they potentially expand or reduce inequality, how their profits are a direct result of some tenant's poverty.

Young mothers who apply for housing assistance in our nation's capital literally could be grandmothers by the time their application is reviewed.

There were evictions that I saw that I know I'll never forget. In one case, the sheriff and the movers came up on a house full of children. The mom had passed away, and the children had just gone on living there. And the sheriff executed the eviction order - moved the kids' stuff out on the street on a cold, rainy day.

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.'

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

I don't think that you can address poverty unless you address the lack of affordable housing in the cities.

In a way, no one's harder on the poor than the poor themselves.

A community that sees so clearly its own disadvantage or its own hardships also has a harder time seeing its potential: its ability to work together to change the community and change their lives.

Eviction is part of a business model at the bottom of the market.

Eviction comes with a record, too, and just as a criminal record can bar you from receiving certain benefits or getting a foothold in the labor market, the record of eviction comes with consequences as well. It can bar you from getting good housing in a good neighborhood.

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.