The face of America's eviction epidemic is a mom with kids.
Eviction reveals people's vulnerability and desperation as well as their ingenuity and guts.
Children didn't shield families from eviction: They exposed them to it.
Families, when they get a housing voucher, they move a lot less. They move into better neighborhoods. Their kids go to the same school more consistently. Their kids have more food, and they get stronger. There are massive returns.
When I was confronted with just the bare facts of poverty and inequality in America, it always disturbed and confused me.
Losing a home sends families to shelters, abandoned houses, and the street.
I come from a specific tradition of sociology, which is urban ethnography.
Home is the center of life. It's the wellspring of personhood. It's where we say we're ourselves.
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.
Housing being a top-order issue for cities is something that's not trivial.
If you just catalog the effects eviction has on people's live and neighborhoods, it's pretty troubling.
All homeowners in America may deduct mortgage interest on their first and second homes.
I see myself working in the tradition of sociology and journalism that tries to bear witness to poverty.
I started a student organization that was basically designed to connect students with homeless folks. We visited them and sometimes brought food, but mostly we were there for swapping stories.
When I talk to booksellers, they tell me how hard it is to hand-sell some of my books because I do keep popping around.
Substandard housing was a blow to your psychological health, not only because things like dampness, mold, and overcrowding could bring about depression but also because of what living in awful conditions told you about yourself.
Eviction is much more an inevitability than a result of irresponsibility.
Between 2009 and 2011, more than one in eight Milwaukee renters were displaced involuntarily, whether by formal or informal eviction, landlord foreclosure, or building condemnation.
Evictions cause job loss. Because it's such a destabilizing, stressful event, they lose their footing in the labor market. It has big impacts on people's health, especially mental health.
A universal voucher program would change the face of poverty in this country.
