Poverty Quotes by Matthew Desmond

I left college with a deep sense that I needed to understand poverty more.

— Matthew Desmond

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

— Matthew Desmond

Eviction is fundamentally changing the face of poverty.

— Matthew Desmond

“Instability is not inherent to poverty. Poor families move so much because they are forced to. Along”

— Matthew Desmond

I see myself writing in the tradition of urban ethnography and in the tradition of the sociology of poverty.

— Matthew Desmond

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

— Matthew Desmond

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

— Matthew Desmond

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

— Matthew Desmond

When I was confronted with just the bare facts of poverty and inequality in America, it always disturbed and confused me.

— Matthew Desmond

You have to understand the role the landlords are playing in shaping neighborhoods, how they potentially expand or reduce inequality, how their…

— Matthew Desmond

The poor don't want some small life. They don't want to game the system. They want to contribute, and they want to…

— Matthew Desmond

This country has so much wealth and so much poverty, and that seemed wrong to me. 'Evicted' was my Ph.D. dissertation.

— Matthew Desmond

The texture and hardship of poverty and eviction is something that I think left the deepest impression on me, and I hope…

— Matthew Desmond

“One's sovereignty over the land is expressed most powerfully in the act of banishment. Perhaps the first eviction recorded in human history…

— Matthew Desmond

A lot of people didn't know just what eviction does to people, how it really sets their life on a different and…

— Matthew Desmond

“Poverty is two-faced—a matter of income and expenses, input and output—and in a world of exploitation, it will not be effectively ameliorated…

— Matthew Desmond

“The pursuit of happiness undeniably includes the pursuit of material well-being: minimally, being able to secure basic necessities. It can be overwhelming…

— Matthew Desmond

I don't want to sound Pollyannish about this. I understand that poverty is never just poverty. It's often this collection of maladies,…

— Matthew Desmond

“If we are going to spend the bulk of our public dollars on the affluent — at least when it comes to…

— Matthew Desmond

“They have shown that problems endemic to poverty—residential instability, severe deprivation, concentrated neighborhood disadvantage, health disparities, even joblessness—stem from the lack of…

— Matthew Desmond

“Most federal housing subsidies benefit families with six-figure incomes.59 If we are going to spend the bulk of our public dollars on…

— Matthew Desmond

I wanted to write a book about poverty that wasn't only about the poor. I was looking for some sort of narrative…

— Matthew Desmond

“It was once said that the poor are 'constantly exposed to evidence of their own irrelevance.' Especially for poor African-American families -…

— Matthew Desmond

You meet folks who are funny and really smart and persistent and loving that are confronting this thing we call poverty, which…

— Matthew Desmond

“Screening practices that banned criminality and poverty in the same stroke drew poor families shoulder to shoulder with drug dealers, sex offenders,…

— Matthew Desmond

“People like Larraine lived with so many compounded limitations that it was difficult to imagine the amount of good behavior or self-control…

— Matthew Desmond

“When people began to view their neighborhood as brimming with deprivation and vice, full of “all sorts of shipwrecked humanity,” they lost…

— Matthew Desmond

“Losing your home and possessions and often your job; being stamped with an eviction record and denied government housing assistance; relocating to…

— Matthew Desmond

“Our current state of affairs reduces to poverty people born for better things.”

— Matthew Desmond

If we take a hard look at what poverty is, its nature, it's not pretty - it's full of trauma.

— Matthew Desmond

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

— Matthew Desmond

If poverty persists in America, it is not for lack of resources. We lack something else.

— Matthew Desmond

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

— Matthew Desmond

A universal voucher program would change the face of poverty in this country.

— Matthew Desmond

What we're seeing is that even in high poverty neighborhoods, the average cost of renting is quickly approaching the total income of…

— Matthew Desmond

I don't think we can fix poverty without fixing housing, and I don't think we can address housing without understanding landlords.

— Matthew Desmond

Even growing up the way I did, I was shocked by the level of poverty I saw as a college student. I…

— Matthew Desmond

Families who get evicted tend to live in worse housing than they did before, and they live in neighborhoods with higher poverty…

— Matthew Desmond

Poverty is not just a sad accident, but it's also a result of the fact that some people make a lot of…

— Matthew Desmond

If we continue to tolerate this level of poverty in our cities, and go along with eviction as commonplace in poor neighborhoods,…

— Matthew Desmond