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
Without the ability to plant roots and invest in your community or your school - because you're paying 60, 70, 80 percent of your income to rent - and eviction becomes something of an inevitability to you, it denies you certain freedoms.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Financial burdens from high rent can limit an individual's freedom and ability to invest in their community.
Matthew Desmond's quote highlights how exorbitant rent prices can strip away an individual's sense of stability and ownership within their community. When a significant portion of one's income goes toward rent, it makes it difficult to invest time, resources, and energy into local schools and communal activities, ultimately leading to a cycle of insecurity and disconnection from the environment around them.
Themes
CommunityRentFreedomStabilityInvest
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech addressing housing issues, a community leader might use this quote to emphasize the need for affordable housing.
More from Matthew Desmond
All quotes →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.
Matthew DesmondRead
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.
Matthew DesmondRead
When I was confronted with just the bare facts of poverty and inequality in America, it always disturbed and confused me.
Matthew DesmondRead
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.
Matthew DesmondRead
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.
Matthew DesmondRead
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