If you have someone who is paying 88 percent of her income on rent, and we have laws that allow a landlord to evict a tenant who falls behind under those circumstances, eviction becomes an inevitability.
Matthew DesmondRead
Eviction is part of a business model at the bottom of the market.
Interpretation
Eviction is often a strategic choice in low-income housing markets, showcasing the challenges faced by tenants.
Matthew Desmond's quote illustrates how the practice of eviction is not merely a consequence of individual circumstances but is ingrained in the business practices of landlords who operate in low-income areas. This reveals the structural issues within the housing market, where vulnerable populations are disproportionately affected by these policies, leading to cycles of poverty and instability.
In practice
During a speech on housing policy, one might say, 'As noted by Matthew Desmond, eviction is part of a business model at the bottom of the market.'
If you have someone who is paying 88 percent of her income on rent, and we have laws that allow a landlord to evict a tenant who falls behind under those circumstances, eviction becomes an inevitability.
Do we believe housing is a right and that affordable housing is part of what it should mean to be an American? I say yes.
The texture and hardship of poverty and eviction is something that I think left the deepest impression on me, and I hope that I try to convey a little bit of that to the reader.
When I was confronted with just the bare facts of poverty and inequality in America, it always disturbed and confused me.
Arguably, the families most at need of housing assistance are systematically denied it because they're stamped with an eviction record. Moms and kids are bearing the brunt of those consequences.
Moms that get evicted are depressed and have higher rates of depressive symptoms two years later. That has to affect their interactions with their kids and their sense of happiness. You add all that together, and it's just really obvious to me that eviction is a cause, not just a condition, of poverty.
The real bosses in the capitalist system of market economy are the consumers. They by their buying and by their abstention from buying decide who should own the capital and run the plants. They determine what should be produced and in what quantity and quality. Their attitudes result either in profit or in loss for the enterpriser. They make poor men rich and rich men poor. They are no easy bosses.
Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own.
I'm quite worried about the fiscal imbalances that we've got and what that might mean in terms of financial crisis ahead.
In a very weak economy, when you say 'cut government spending,' what you mean is you're laying off school teachers and you're de-funding various programs that put money into the economy. This means you have more unemployed people that then draw unemployment benefits and don't pay taxes.
I've never been on Wall Street. And I care about Wall Street for one reason and one reason only because what happens on Wall Street matters to Main Street.
The market is incredibly inefficient and capable on rare occasions of being utterly dysfunctional. And people have a really hard time getting their brain around that fact. They want to believe that it's approximately efficient almost all the time, and it simply isn't true.
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