{"quotes":[{"text":"Universal housing programs have been successfully implemented all over the developed world. In countries that have such programs, every single family with an income below a certain level who meets basic program requirements has a right to housing assistance.","author":"Matthew Desmond","tags":["housing","poverty","universal-housing"],"id":8683,"author_id":"Matthew+Desmond"},{"text":"Housing without people, and people without housing.","author":"Milad Hanna","tags":["housing","housing-crisis","housing-demand","housing-projects","housing-provision","housing-supply","people"],"id":26593,"author_id":"Milad+Hanna"},{"text":"Arleen’s children did not always have a home. They did not always have food. Arleen was not always able to offer them stability; stability cost too much. She was not always able to protect them from dangerous streets; those streets were her streets. Arleen sacrificed for her boys, fed them as best she could, clothed them with what she had. But when they wanted more than she could give, she had ways, some subtle, others not, of telling them they didn’t deserve it.","author":"Matthew Desmond","tags":["family","family-life","housing","poverty","renting"],"id":32525,"author_id":"Matthew+Desmond"},{"text":"Poor black families were “immersed in a domestic web of a large number of kin and friends whom they [could] count on,” wrote the anthropologist Carol Stack in All Our Kin. Those entwined in such a web swapped goods and services on a daily basis. This did little to lift families out of poverty, but it was enough to keep them afloat. But large-scale social transformations—the crack epidemic, the rise of the black middle class, and the prison boom among them—had frayed the family safety net in poor communities. So had state policies like Aid to Families with Dependent Children that sought to limit “kin dependence” by giving mothers who lived alone or with unrelated roommates a larger stipend than those who lived with relatives.","author":"Matthew Desmond","tags":["eviction","housing","inner-city","poverty"],"id":35933,"author_id":"Matthew+Desmond"},{"text":"It is hard to argue that housing is not a fundamental human need. Decent, affordable housing should be a basic right for everybody in this country. The reason is simple: without stable shelter, everything else falls apart.","author":"Matthew Desmond","tags":["affordable-housing","bare-necessity","housing","human-rights","poverty","stability"],"id":40030,"author_id":"Matthew+Desmond"},{"text":"When tenants relinquished protections by falling behind in rent or otherwise breaking their rental agreement, landlords could respond by neglecting repairs. Or as Sherrena put it to tenants: “If I give you a break, you give me a break.” Tenants could trade their dignity and children’s health for a roof over their head. 13 Between 2009 and 2011, nearly half of all renters in Milwaukee experienced a serious and lasting housing problem. 14 More than 1 in 5 lived with a broken window; a busted appliance; or mice, cockroaches, or rats for more than three days. One-third experienced clogged plumbing that lasted more than a day. And 1 in 10 spent at least a day without heat. African American households were the most likely to have these problems—as were those where children slept. Yet the average rent was the same, whether an apartment had housing problems or did not. Tenants who fell behind either had to accept unpleasant, degrading, and sometimes dangerous housing conditions or be evicted. But from a business point of view, this arrangement could be lucrative.","author":"Matthew Desmond","tags":["eviction","housing","poverty","renting"],"id":87522,"author_id":"Matthew+Desmond"},{"text":"History will see this as the residential commodification era, in which housing provision seemed to lose all contact between supply and demand of housing as a utility and simply focused on supply and demand of investment — and that is worrying. Investment is good for the economy, but the investment you want is investment that goes into creating homes, workplaces and infrastructure, not investing in owning them and inflating asset prices.","author":"Peter Rees","tags":["home","housing","housing-crisis","housing-demand","housing-provision","housing-supply","infrastructure"],"id":88396,"author_id":"Peter+Rees"},{"text":"In 1930, the death rate for Milwaukee’s blacks was nearly 60 percent higher than the citywide rate, due in large part to poor housing conditions.","author":"Matthew Desmond","tags":["housing","life-expectancy","poverty"],"id":94629,"author_id":"Matthew+Desmond"},{"text":"If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man — and I think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantages — it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.","author":"Henry David Thoreau","tags":["civilization","cost","housing","life"],"id":106646,"author_id":"Henry+David+Thoreau"},{"text":"I never doubted I would have a roof over my head, a school to go to, enough to to eat, books (and newspapers) to read, a safe neighborhood to play in and a doctor to see if I got sick.My parents and grandparents made sure I knew I was lucky.","author":"Chelsea Clinton","tags":["community","food-security","housing","it-s-your-world","lucky","poverty"],"id":135098,"author_id":"Chelsea+Clinton"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":39,"pages":4,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}