the reviews of all been outstanding. and comparisons have been drawn to behind the beautiful forever. the new york times has called this an extensively researched, vividly realized and above all of ignorable book adding that after evicted it will no longer be possible to have a serious discussion about poverty that having a serious discussion about housing. desmond is the winner of the 2015 macarthur genius grant them author of several other books including on the fire line. he is currently the john l loeb associate professor of social sciences at harvard and the codirector of the justice and poverty project. please help me welcome matthew stettin. [applause]

>> you get the nice chair. you get the nice chair. such an honor to be here in this book store which is so special to the city and people who love books. it is an honor to be here. thank you everyone for coming out. good to see people i love and the audience and friends. i appreciate you guys taking time out of your super busy schedule to hear me out on this one. there are two chairs. two chairs. teachers exist. they are empty. let's do it. let's just do it. we're solving problems. ..

>> >> en to try to put myself into their everyday life but i knew if i would understand this connection between housing and poverty they had to respect me sublet to

eviction court as well to buy and sell property and deliver groceries and collect rents. and this is happening was coming up with the questions , often does eviction happen? what are the long-term consequences? i wanted to study to a answer the question i found basically nothing there is no good data so i decided to give myself with the survey and over 100 mentors in the city of milwaukee millions of 911 calls to put the information was what i was seeing on the ground to to figure out what is going on at the very bottom today and think he kept the other honest this swiss looked at in the process of an

eviction summerlike blacks and had children some don't my neighbor at the taylor park was a grandmother who had to decide to pay the rent where the gas bill to take a hot shower we meet a gregarious remodel the disabled single dad to tries to work off the rent for his and landlord in a mob of three kids who never had a criminal record that was deaf and desperate to keep her family had also participated in an armed robbery to pay the landlord. in a ben a difficult year as they were throwing snowballs at passing cars they smacked

a car into jerked to a stop the cousin ran inside and locked the door the man kicked the door broken down the daintily he left before anything else happened but when her grandmother found out she evicted them for damaging property so she took her two sons to the salvation army homeless shelter and she said the was still at the lodge tonight like it was a hotel she found one on 19th street with the there was no water it was my favorite place. we know that the families and give relocated to substandard housing now they

eventually found unfit to for human habitation they boarded up the windows and doors and then she was on the hunt for another place to live in said retake we can get. but what she could get the that she soon learned it was a haven for her boys who had a beautiful smile so why she moved was important to understand where she ended up in such a tough neighborhood when they move from four neighborhoods to even for once. she moved out as fast as she

could and found a duplex on 13th the door had to be locked it was filthy. but she put on a good face the rent in the worst neighborhood $550.2 bedrooms which was 88 percent of her budget. at the beginning of every month was:. spending the majority of what she had a housing housing, where most low-income renters paid most of what they have at least 70 percent of their income to pay rent. and under these conditions

evictions was delays personal irresponsibility but many of us still think the typical low income family of that - - gets is that housing assistance but the opposite is true. only one of four houses that qualify for housing assistance receive it. when data for. that arrangement would be unthinkable to the other social services so mentioned his we took all investor duane 83 and for people with the new stamps. but this is not calculated in years but did decades. if you apply for public housing today he may be held

by the time you're housing application comes up. most are getting nothing from the government. on 13th street she found painted in the basement and painted the walls but not called after her sister died. persisted in the spiritual sense and decided to contribute to the funeral. co she didn't have money so the next month she had an appointment with her welfare case worker because the payment was made to the 19th street her $628 much welfare check was sliced then she got the eviction notice milwaukee has 105,000

households and the effect 16,000 every year. that is 40 year one dash 40 people a day. these numbers up on the screen are only court ordered a legally evictions. with there are other ways for a landlord to displace the family i have a minority who will pay you if you're out by sunday where they will just take off the door we worked really hard to capture that because of they don't like what happened to arlene. when you add up all of those every two years to about eight printers that are effected which is the

incredibly high number which is a saving kansas city your cleave landor chicago or other cities that i have worked out -- looked at with the american housing survey over 2.8 million households in the united states has eviction. the epidemic with any housing court in america with low income african-americans loans are steadily -- startling. most report being evicted and some point in their life. that is a startling number

if we have this incarceration to have this critical experience eviction is the equivalent to reshape their lives. but the problem is widespread in an immigrant communities something that is going on all over the country. regardless of their income income, but in the eviction court we had a day in january the weather men were working themselves out that the temperature could bottom out of 40 below degrees but

he could call the sheriff if we waited any longer to read lot show up with the team of movers to put her staff of the sidewalk the plants so she took the boys and she went to the homeless shelter again. said she called 120 apartments and 40 then 60 than 80. i counted. she was accepted to none of them and in the inner city most were out of reach for the places that she could afford they were not calling back because of her eviction record is published online for free for anyone to see

so even with the recent eviction record. so that is how they get pushed into the worst neighborhoods. finally the 90th one said yes. schaede and consider the neighborhood a house is a house. two months after her hearing she moved into the new place. all the covers had handles all the lights had pictures it was nice. should bader things to unpack was everything was inside she sat on the floor found a garbage bag of clothes and her boys sat down next to her and they just stayed like that she

liked things neat if you don't take yourself you have problems it is hard to me 14 with long stretches of homelessness and identify different schools. he kicked a girl in the shin and instead of calling the principal she called the police. when the landlord found out he told her she had to go. she told me after that it was all that for nothing.

tired but i can sleep. recently published a study had found mothers who are evicted experienced higher rates of infection two years after the event will between 2005 and 2010 suicide prevention and foreclosure doubled. i wish my life were different. then i could sit back into the laughing the whole is

the center of life we can be ourselves everywhere else we're summer -- someone else. but isn't just the condition but the cause. we cannot fix poverty unless the six housing. what should we do? i think the way to answer the question is do we believe housing is a fundamental right?

the part of what it means to be an american is to have access to safe and decent housing? provision of old age. because we have agreed as a society it is fundamental to human flourishing and it is hard to argue without stable shelter everything else falls apart and the way to deliver on this obligation is the universal voucher program. to serve those looking minorities and expand to meet the needs of all families above the poverty line the idea is simply take a voucher the seventh paying 80 percent of your incomer 70% you pay 30 percent with

a voucher covering the rest and live for free like it would change the face of poverty for this country homelessness would drop after years and years they do one consistent thing they go to the garage restore and buy more food their children become stronger and less anemic and healthier but a lot of kids today are not getting enough to eat to. that it is wrong the national affordable housing program and of human capital investment a community improvement plan all in one. think this is one of many policy recommendations that could be thrown to the

problem and others come it might not work one has to build another ass to tear down the one thing is clear that the endorsement the extreme degree of inequality no american value no ethical teachings of a we have allowed our nations to become. thank you. [applause] >> before rigo to the questions there is a black car in the handicapped spot

that has its lights on. >> this is more of a statement. in 2014 there were $180 billion of tax expenditures for deductions for people in this room who have mortgages to deduct the interest and deduct real estate taxes when they sell the house they get a break from the capital gains so with that putting it into vouchers. >>. >> you are right for the purity have universal housing program it just isn't for the poor. for many middle-class americans the mortgage income data reduction is a road to stability what they bargained for period but we need to be honest that the

majority of our tax dollars with respect to housing goes to homes of six-figure incomes poverty persist not for lack of resources. >> as a native from milwaukee i am curious to hear your connection to the city and why you chose this for your city i have not read the book yet. >> i love to milwaukee there is something about that city that made me feel at home. the story of urban america's on the margin with think the biggest successes with those of reconsider our biggest failures. if you want to write a story to have a shot milwaukee

gives you a good shot. it is a milwaukee book bretelles a very american story. >> to questions. with a conversation about homelessness landlords are depicted as a sympathetic or exploitation can you humanize them a little bit? are they rational that make those decisions in a system? or are they the enemies? what you think it brings to your policy recommendations?

>> the book works very hard to complicate the relationship. we let ourselves off the hook if we just say very are irresponsible they are greedy but the reality is is more complicated than that the when she moved in the kids to have food she went to the persian store and bought food. she can slip on the rent how many of us would be okay with that? but they take the hit directly. she had stuff thrown through her window or put the socks down the sink in tehran the water and move out. also she makes in a month what are the makes in one year. that is a fact.

when i lived in the trade airpark it was important to the understand how much of a landlord was making a look that vacancies and missing payments and mortgage payments and the taxes of electricity and water am just telling you this you believe me that the landlord of the worst to the park made up of 131 trailers has over $470,000 in profit after expenses every year that is over 30 times what his talents make an over 50 times with those on disabilities make and are we okay with that? is that something we should tolerate? we need to have a public conversation. the second question that had

to tell people stories houses that connected to reform? getting of the way to allow people to come through and document as vigorously as what she is going through that terrible decision with the effect this has on her soul and how this will blunt her capacity that is born for better things and to be deeply connected to policy reform with generation after generation puccini the laws in new york city by showing the degradation of women such as very much a tradition of that type of work.

>> white is is disproportionate talk -- affect black women? with the ongoing prevalence of racial discrimination. quoting a study after study but i will tell you one story. five was with to african-american women who were both homeless and looking for housing. and they were in a place and i was in a car and from what the woman tells me there was not a tub. son she said you have another place? they said yes.

but then to stop themselves as remembering something. wouldn't you know, that? so i wrote down the number i called the next day and i said is said to have the tub? he drove me to lipper count that happens a lot that is a real thing. the also the role of kids. and thought they windshield people but actually it exposes people. you see this in her story about the snowballs in the incident at school.

but when you look at the eviction court why are you or not you? you can control how much they owe or household income the what really matters if you have kids. then your eyes of receiving evictions tripled ucla and north whosever rather work with you instead of you. so the question space scar to pieces. >> end your influences end it is very different with statistical analysis. >> of course, the random

family. end the tradition enough people that are writing about poverty from the ground level had a deep mark on me. but i was operating within the tradition. and since we are in washington d.c.. but the main thing 1967 about african-american men in this city bus live incredibly brilliant ethnography. that is one of my most favorite son would have to say. >> your presentation and the power point display brings out the brutality of the

fictions and the cost. when you walk by a sight when there has been in the fiction we see is in just somebody's belongings, but the photograph that raises a very practical question would on the street is not just furniture or mementos, etc.. that will never be recovered read the time the person gets back they are destroyed or gone. there was a time where the city would pick a belongings and store them is that done

in milwaukee? >> what i did not realize going into it you don't just fallujah home but your possessions in milwaukee if you can have a share if the eviction your stuff is thrown on the sidewalk or the truck that it is taken by the movers bandit is stored in bondage storage which means you have to pay $375 to get back after the first month and it goes up every month after that. it is a storage facility so it is a business purpose of the biggest moving company the owners told me 70 percent of the moves of what they do gets thrown in the dump. that is a race for your

possessions. >> i am also from milwaukee they appreciate the book i know the neighborhoods your talking about. candy talk about the impact on the kids and their schooling for those who are effected? both from the trailer homes? >> yes. it leaves a deep and jagged scar on the next generation. twitter lead was living in the homeless shelter outside of town. but there are higher needs. to find a home the ones who do i will get you in school. there is a higher needed to get them in school but then there is a crisis to emerge again and again. we are not able to allow

kids to reach their full potential if we keep sending them around to schools everywhere they go hungry because their mom doesn't have enough food because so much is spent on housing we need a lot more research. but it is obvious there is a -- it is fundamental. >> the key so much. embedded -- incredibly powerful presentation you chose to speak through stories and pictures as a human approach to about looking those up in other venues? there are exhibitions in view pivoted so what will you do about it? is anyone taking up this mantle?

it is the political season. >> one thing i did my wife and i started organization called just shelter. >> this was not a set up. [laughter] >> we did not talk earlier. [laughter] but this does two things and first highlights and emphasizes the role of the nonprofit center playing all over the work country with housing if your in bethesda or nebraska click on the map see the organization's that are working hard. we are allowing people to put in their own stories we

would get letters from people this is what i went through. i said to have to broadcast that so if you have experienced foreclosure or eviction in share your story up load to liggett the human cost of the crisis. that is what we're doing to scale up. so when confronted with the fact more than any other rich democracy at all right again once incentivize work and also a to recognize party is not just in, but also extractive markets.

we need to address this from multiple angles but without addressing this housing crisis will fall flat. >> i find it amazing. it just staggers me but you obviously went to a certain level with the people you interviewed and looked at. did you think to move on to the next level of politicians are members of the state legislature?

because i see them as able to influence only if this kind of federation is really polished into their faces using that expression. i really think there are no easy answers. but what forceful methods can be used to make the population aware. but with these elections and all the nonsense that are talked about i don't hear the word poverty mentioned very much. we will hear it. >> one thing i am doing is writing a book and having

conversations. i think we are a bit more hopeful and having a conversation that is going on both sides said the ideal of various political persuasions i encourage we have reached the point that we are very unsettled by level of inequality but there is reasons to be optimistic. just think of several generations ago we had slums and the largest cities. we took those on and we won the battle. i am not naive how much further we need to go with housing problems and i lived in the trend airpark for the book and it times is said i don't have a writer and i will write about you so

aventurine neighbors. but to make huge leaps forward but then we make a huge problem it is getting harder and harder to afford. is the things we can do at a local level? absolutely. we should extend legal help to families ceasing eviction. unlike criminal court they have no rights and civil. 70% death tenants but if you think ever leave he doesn't have a high-school education would you go? i don't know. a lot don't sold 70 percent of cases no one shows up it

is a knave and then a silence. we can change that on a local level to provide assistance to make an investment to stem the tide of the consequences for e evictions downstream. that is something we can do on the local level. >> what i meant to ask is that when you approach higher level politicians such as members of the maryland legislature were they responsive? were there more important issues to deal with? >> we did not know the depth of the problem i did not know going into it. we didn't know that it was directly causing poverty

there is a lot we have to learn that the way housing is working its way to the folks of the legislature. >>. >> bios o m from milwaukee. [laughter] >> this is so cool. [laughter] san miguel was the tenants organized in my youth. but since then i go back every two years in october before the election and i have been canvassing including the neighborhood is that you speak of. i am struck overall from one

ec in that city the working-class city where 20 years ago you could make $8 an hour but today that is all over. i just want to ask you of the political consequences of the housing crisis i see when i go door-to-door. there are tremendous efforts to create support in these communities around the yield on the campaign. >> every year i go back they are gone. the houses are gone and they are boarded up this is how you end up with scott walker a state with a progressive tradition is a battleground in part because of that. can you speak to that of the political consequences or

the destruction of the community. >> in some neighborhoods in milwaukee have an extremely high eve fiction rate. one at a four households is gone so how do we build a community? how do we allow people to invest? you are absolutely right. it is also the fact these neighborhoods have been neglected for decades. there is a concentrated amount and what we are working together to make ends meet and to see that political potential.

milwaukee lost more jobs than during the depression. but what i want to say is i saw that in the lives of the family of this book but i saw a brilliancy and generosity and courage in the face of adversity. one time we were at the salvation army homeless shelter and the homeless were eating lunch at a mcdonald's. a boy walks and. may be nine with dirty clothes it looked like somebody hit him in the face. he didn't go up to order he went to the table looking for scraps.

crystal said would you got? ceased to homeless women and bought him lunch and gave him a hug and sent him on his way she said i wished had a home i would take him in. you also see that. it reminds me how gracefully day the - - refused to be reduced by their hardships. >> as terrific. thanks for bringing this forward. one final comment. those people now will be required to have picture identification in order to vote this will be impossible. we will see the consequences because of these kinds of requirements how can he possibly have governmental a

dedication if you don't know where you're living next month? >> i am not from milwaukee. [laughter] >> going back to ethnography to have a qualitative policy pressure to chase away people are viewing in our communities and there was a question for the landlords for those who are impoverished or homeless better always worried about poverty and the history of the white males going to the inner-city is. while being very helpful to have perpetuated and reduced the norms.

so personally how have you wrestled with lifting up the port and while continuing to humanize those and not exaggerate that? >> the ethnographers has a duty to write about life in its full complexity as much as it is the ability to do so. so with human suffering and human courage to write about mistakes that people may -- make but also a junior at the -- generosity but i take these stories very seriously this irresponsibility is one of the deepest and profound owners so putting in n

stories like the mcdonald's story and housing was tough and they were neglecting their place and it was february day asked me to go down to the basement if i could see if there heaped was off like to do something with the furnace. i go down to the basement. i don't know what i am doing. i can get or something. [laughter] i came back up and they bought me a birthday cake. i think writing about people's lives in that way helps us confront the awful trauma and sadness but also

validates and recognizes the duty and complexity and beauty. but it is important to stay in close contact. so i went over every part of the book some people read it to me. that is extremely important that only to get all the facts right but also the essence. >> i am a washingtonian first call i want to thank you congratulate you encourage you the element of what you represented you have violated the eviction as a very powerful symbol

with the issue of affordable housing. our churches built 500 units downtown were relocated. i would encourage you to identify who on the hill or several ideas eviction, is a powerful story but to have a major hearing on affordable housing you know, it is incredible. of the but to see this not those stuck up at harvard.

[laughter] i just want to encourage you and on my part put the idea out there to listen. to tell the story to be high profile and i will do everything that i can to rally support because there needs to be legislation that addresses this. i encourage you and i've less you and i pray for you. >> thank you so much. >> i have a simple question. you understand the tenants they you explain before i got here but who becomes the

landlord? did they decide i want to run a - - and apartment door on a trailer park? what is their story? >> many are second or third generation it is blood so to speak it is the way for immigrant communities so in milwaukee on the south side so they came over that was one way to earn some extra money. so they have that with them. the she found herself as an entrepreneur. and lambeau words to share

that type of quality that they can strike out at nothing and injured blood dash ingenuity and there also is another thing that is to have the stomach for it. it can be difficult work. >> ratio a couple little late forget the this is then cut forget i have had covered housing issues in washington d.c. is a reporter the washington legal clinic for the homeless but they fight in the court any in the d.c. government for homeless issues than the shelter when they have slept in an abandoned hospitals and hallways or if a river in trash cans we live in a very

rich place but we also put the homeless families in the abandoned hospital and we should remember that. there are two big issues that affect washington d.c.. the impact of section 8 and what that did to housing stability because it seems like it replaced terrible housing with hope six and a section eight was unstable way to give people housing. >> we could talk about the ins and outs of different policies. i think for tonight i just want to come back to scale.

with many cities there is amazing things going on with cool affordable housing units with green public housing that is all some. that is not meeting the need the study shows a you can offer housing vouchers are a more efficient way to do that. but this is the best way to help this unlucky majority. if it is section 8 then we just need something. >> they work. when my a friend's receiving

housing voucher it is like thank you jesus i can feed my kid second state in my home and live in my community we know they hate live in less segregated neighborhoods and those of public housing and can start a savings so there isn't a lot of evidence for that so the status quo is a much bigger conclusion when you cannot hold on to your house to launch your job. so for me that is the bottom line. >>. >> the issue is the waiting list. >>. >> thanks for writing this book a drop of less in the '80s and '90s with my mother in washington d.c..

end it is healing to see this and i am looking forward to reading the book. talking about children and to the trauma that is a part of poverty that people rarely talk about. since the '80s deal have the sense how badly the eviction rates have changed? worse or better? do you have a sense whether or not the trauma of poverty has been expanded on as a field of study? >> thanks for sharing that with us. it takes courage and it is beautiful you can hold that and give voice to that. thank you. [applause]

i think there are a lot of folks doing work on poverty today and those of their work with that my university in the labor market discrimination. and a lot of folks are circling the wagons and to understand the best way to make the biggest impact. . .

and yeah, to show that this is something that is affecting hundreds of thousands to millions of people in the human is a new way of understanding that is not within the constant shame or embarrassment, this

crisis, gotten better or worse. not a lot of data on this. a lot of other numbers of where this is happening most i'm working really hard on that exact thing right now. the victims and the cities that ii like that are going up in recent years, and you really count for the 30s and 40s, eviction looks weird. as the individual man. the invisible man. that is how it used to be. it used to draw crowds. 1930s editorial on the times they said because of the cold only a thousand people showed up. that is what it used to be like. now living companies whose full-time job is to evict people. hundreds of hundreds of data

streams that collect information. sheriff's. people have drawn very used to the effect. so give more data on this whole we need you. >> the view. >> ii don't know what your dc housing and for lousy experience has been all but if it has not been extensive, i invite you to a rally tomorrow morning at 10:00 o'clock. the coalition for non- profit policy is meeting at foundry methodist church on 16th street. the mayor will be there. thousands of people. i invite you all. this is this is our opportunity to move this city forward. the mayor is committed by the council is committed. around 10:00 o'clock.

>> thank you. you heard it here. >> thank you so much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> book tv takes hundreds of programs throughout the country all year long. here's a look at some of the events will be covering this week.

the national to local level of the cato institute in washington dc. stevenstephen cop over call a smallpox outbreak that in boston in 1721 and a grounda groundbreaking is of inoculations to temper the disease. from busboys and poets in washington dc thursday will be at norwich university.

author of midnight fury live from the 21st annual los angeles times festival of books. all they coverage including author panels. that is a look at some of the programs. many are open to the public. look for them to air in the near future. >> during their recent visit to long beach, california we spoke about his 40 years is a columnist. >> it used to be a lot bigger deal.