“There are two ways to dehumanize: the first is to strip people of all virtue, the second is to clear them of all sin.”
Author detail
Matthew Desmond is Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology and Principal Investigator of The Eviction Lab. After receiving his Ph.D. in 2010 from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, he joined the Harvard Society of Fellows as a Junior Fellow. His primary teaching and research interests include urban sociology, poverty, race and ethnicity, organizations and work, social theory, and ethnography. Desmond is the author of four books: On the Fireline: Living and Dying with WIldland Firefighters (2007), Race in America (with Mustafa Emirbayer, 2015), The Racial Order (with Mustafa Emirbayer, 2015), and Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016). He also is the editor of the inaugural issue of RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, Volumes 1 & 2: Severe Deprivation in America (2015). Desmond has written essays on educational inequality, dangerous work, political ideology, race and social theory, and the inner-city housing market. Recently, he has published on the prevalence and consequences of eviction and the low-income rental market, network-based survival strategies among the urban poor, and the consequences of new crime control policies on inner-city women in the American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Social Forces, and Demography. In 2015, Desmond was awarded a MacArthur “Genius” grant. ([source][1]) [1]: https://scholar.princeton.edu/matthewdesmond/
Quotes
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“There are two ways to dehumanize: the first is to strip people of all virtue, the second is to clear them of all sin.”
“In the end, we can only do the best we can with who we are, paying close attention to the ways pieces of ourselves matter to the work while never losing sight of the most important questions...”
“Arleen thanked Pana. Getting off the phone, she thanked Jesus. She smiled. When she smiled she looked like a different person. The press had loosened its grip. From landlords, she had heard...”
“I love Milwaukee, the rust belt. It's a very special part of America that's full of promise but also full of pain, where poverty is acute.”
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“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 canard about this rich...”
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“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.”
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“I don't think that you can address poverty unless you address the lack of affordable housing in the cities.”
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“The standard of 'affordable' housing is that which costs roughly 30 percent or less of a family's income. Because of rising housing costs and stagnant wages, slightly more than half of all p...”
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“We can start with housing, the sturdiest of footholds for economic mobility. A national affordable housing program would be an anti-poverty effort, human capital investment, community improv...”
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“African American women, and moms in particular, are evicted at disproportionately high rates.”
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“Poor families are living above their means, in apartments they cannot afford. The thing is, those apartments are already at the bottom of the market.”
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“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 consequen...”
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“It's true that eviction affects the young and the old, the sick and the able-bodied. It affects white folks and black folks and Hispanic folks and immigrants. If you spend time in housing co...”
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“Tenants don't have any right to court-appointed attorneys in civil court, so they're either facing their landlord - or his or her attorney - alone, or they just don't show up. That reflects...”
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“Eviction comes with a record. Just like a criminal record can hurt you in the jobs market, eviction can hurt you in the housing market. A lot of landlords turn folks away who have an evictio...”
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“You lose your home, you are much more likely to lose your job the year following. The reason for that comes back to the bandwidth problem: You're so focused on this event that you're making...”
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“The poor don't want some small life. They don't want to game the system. They want to contribute, and they want to thrive. But poverty reduces people born for better things.”
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“Ours was not always a nation of homeowners; the New Deal fashioned it so, particularly through the G.I. Bill of Rights.”
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“Between 2007 and 2010, the average white family experienced an 11% reduction in wealth, but the average black family lost 31% of its wealth. The average Hispanic family lost 44.7%.”
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“Eviction is part of a business model at the bottom of the market.”
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