six. >> [inaudible] >> i guess i haven't heard the rumors about that. [laughter] >> but that should be easy to verify. thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> i am so pleased to welcome matthew desmond but his new book "evicted" just out and already generating a much needed conversation about poverty in america at in the role he eviction plays to create to deliver a spiral for those on the economic edge. and those it women and children the hardest. to reverse themselves and the poorest communities in

milwaukee and writes about the characters and reads like a local park coho to drive in -- draw comparisons behind the travers than your times has called this extensively researched and above all on and a horrible book after "evicted" you can no longer have a serious discussion about poverty without a serious discussion about housing. matthew desmond is the winner of a grant and also several other books including on the fire when ready chronicles the fire crew in northern arizona. professor of social science at harvard and co-director of the justice m. party project.

please help me to welcome tingling. [applause] >> so now you can have a nice chair. >> it is so special to be here it is an honor of his good to see people i love in the audience thanks for taking time editors super busy schedule. there are two chairs right here. they are for you to do it. clear already making a difference. [laughter]

this book is based on the in depth with fieldwork. when i was living in two neighborhoods in the city spending time with people getting evicted from their homes i was into a trailer park and they lived there five months then i went to their traditional african-american for neighborhood and there brimming house a rented room and live there about 10 months. i indebted myself and the lives of the extremely hard situation went to eviction court a whit to funerals with them. and tried to sink as deeply as i could.

with this housing and poverty i also spent time with landlords doing evictions i watched them buy and sell property. and collect rent. when this is happening i was coming up with questions like how does it happen or food as it happened to? it would help me to answer those questions there was no good deed is such that i would give myself. i analyzed the eviction records millions of 911 calls. because what i saw on the ground to think about what is going on today.

what is really is a large and a dispute able single dad who tries to work off their rent with his live or the mother of three kids have never had a criminal record but was desperate to keep her family house so participated in a botched armed robberies to get the money to pay the landlord. for i cannot tell you about all the stories but i will tell you about arlene. it was a difficult year with a snowball the 14 year-old

and his cousin were tossing snowballs at cars and he smacked a car endymion jumped out a river inside to lock the door but the indian kick the door in a broken-down fatefully he left before anything happened but when the landlord found out she evicted from arlene and the boys for damaging property. i'm there were 14 and six. they went to the salvation army housing there would call it the launch so it would sound like a hotel. it was my favorite place we know from the survey them

the szeged evicted relocate to substandard housing that has a bad effect on kids. the city found her place unfit for habitation is a they removed her imported up the windows so she was on the hunt for another place to live. , she said we will take whatever we can get that is what looks like. in what she could get was a complex in the apartment. but it was a drug haven she was worried for her boys especially for her boys who would talk to anyone with a great smile. evicted families move from

poor neighborhoods to even for one's and even more dangerous and moved out as fast as she could she founded to pension duplex there is a good sized hole in the window the door had to be locked with a blank in the carpet was dirty she put a piece of cloth in the window and hung curtains. it was one of the worst neighborhoods and it was $550. 80% of her welfare check. 80% every month:. and was not alone to explain and were most low-income renters for what they have

their spending nearly 70 percent of their income to keep the lights on and pay the rent. housing costs soared in the 2000's and many of us -- of us still think the typical low income family benefits from public housing or other assistance but the opposite is true. only one of four qualified - - four that would be unthinkable with those that meet basic needs if we turn three of 4:00 p.m. is apply for food stamps. sari. you have to go hungry but that is how we treat housing. the waiting list is not counted in years but decades

if you're a single parent and apply today you might be a grandparent by the time the application comes up. most are getting nothing from the government. said she found painted in the basin in she painted the walls but not long after her sister died not physical but spiritual and her close since it decided to contribute something. she did not have the money. so the next month she missed an appointment with her welfare worker because the letter went to the past

address so then as her welfare check was cut to and have just like that. seven she got the pink eviction papers. wan ports have roughly 16,000 people evicted every year that is about 40 people per day. there are only the form ulf court-ordered evictions. there are cheaper and quicker ways. a weld order let you pay you $2 if you're out by sunday. i'm the one that will just take your door off. we worked hard to capture the informally evictions and don't go to the courts and those that do. landlord foreclosures it would happen to arlene's

favorite place did you learn every two years one of eight renters in the city of milwaukee is evicted it is an incredibly high number. , and according to the most recent data from the american housing survey 2.8 million households with this sicken the able-bodied into walking into any urban housing court you will see row after row of moms and kids will include african-american moms are effected at startlingly high rates one edify black women before being evicted at some

time for white women is one of a 15. it is a startling number if we have the incarceration. and that is reshaping the lives that this problem is widespread. to affect it meet -- and a great communities all over the country. '04 the days came and went of with an early date in january.

they said it would be the coldest day in a decade the temperatures could bottom of 40 degrees below windchill. but if they waited in the longer they would call the sheriff who would arrive with a team of movers to pile her things on the sidewalk her food in the freezer for plants and has no machine. and once again to begin searching for housing. and then 40 and 60 and 80 and i counted. she was not to expect it to any place. windows that she could afford were not calling back and part of the reason has to do with three eviction record.

in milwaukee the eviction of record is published online for free so they will just reject anyone with a recent record that is why families are pushed into the worst neighborhoods. now the 90th when lord the she said the house is the house. so to look after her court hearing she moved into a new place. they brought in their things and they liked it. all the cupboards that handles. it was nice. she would unpacked then she sat down on the floor and she found a garbage bag and leaned against it.

and the boys jointer and they stayed like that for a long time. she got her stuck data storage the souders and started to act out in school it is hard to be 14 in experience long stretches of homelessness between seventh and eighth grade he was at five different schools. 1da teacher snapped at him and sheep -- she kicked her in the shin and ran home in instead of calling the principal she called the police. when they followed him home in the landlord found out he told are lean she had to go.

she said after that like i have a curse it will stop sometimes i find my body shaking and tired but i cannot sleep my body is trying to shut down. recently published a study that fund the others evicted experience higher rates of depression and two years after the event and we know between 2005 and 2010 the rent is going up and up suicide is due to eviction in foreclosure doubled. and g-7 wish my life were different.

and to remember stuff like this. the hold is the center. the refuge from work. we can beat where someone else we take off the mask. it and languages spoken all over the world's. but even it shouldn't the use to draw a crowd and it isn't just the condition but a cause. of this we fix housing what

should we do about it? i think the way to answer that question do we believe housing is a fundamental right? do we believe what it means to be an american? to have access to safe and decent housing? with the provision and old age. because we have agreed as a society they are fundamental to flourishing and it is hard to argue that it is a fundamental to human flourishing. everything else falls apart the way to deliver upon this obligation so it meets the needs of all families living

on the poverty line. if you get a voucher instead of paying 80 percent or 70 percent you pay 30 percent. you can live forever you like. it would change the face of poverty debate become rare again. they finally receive housing vouchers after years and years. they go to the garage restore. they buy more food to read and eats first. that is wrong.

please keeling capital investment all rolled into one. this is one of many potential policy recommendations let others come. :city has to build another has to tear down. with his extreme degree of inequality. that is justified. with no holy scripture. one thank you for coming. [applause]

mr. mathis is where the state maderas hundred $80 billion of tax expenditures for deductions as sin people in this room to deduct the interest and real-estate taxes and when they sell the house to get a break on capital gains. so put that into vouchers. >> your right. here have universal housing a justice and for the port

the mortgage reduction in debt we can be honest about the fact. is with respect to housing and have six-figure income and stop repeating that they cannot afford to do more. it isn't for lack of resources. as a native from milwaukee and why you chose this civic i haven't read the book hit. >> there is something about that because this story of urban america is on the margins, but the biggest

successes and to maybe consider the biggest failure write about an american experience it is the good shot at this. is a milwaukee book but a very american story. >> in the conversation men are depicted as ill intentions and. king you humanize them a little bit? are they just rational or can we characterize them

don't you think ethnography brings those quantitative numbers? >> so it works hard to complicate their relationship with letters sells off the hook if we just say they are irresponsible in or they are greedy. it is more complicated. arlene's landlord when she moved in and she noticed she didn't have food to which the girl she store and buy food for her. she has allowed tenants to slip on rand. and they do that directly one was thrown a fireball through her office window or stick sox down the sink to

on the water in about. she makes any single month what are the makes in a single year that is the fact. when i lived in the trailer park and thought it was important to understand how much the landlord was making solid debt taken scenes, the missing payments, mortgage and taxes electricity and water i golan and don but if you believe me the landlord of the worst trailer park with 131 trailers $470,000 in profit every year. after expenses. that is over 30 times from minimum-wage and over 50 times of those on disability. are we okay with that?

we need to the public conversation. and how to tell people stories was that connected to reform? but to have people like darlene to come through to document what she is going through in the affected as from her parenting and that is deeply connected for policy reform with a generation after generation.

to change the laws to show the degradation of tenants this is the spirit of that type of work. >> is a disproportionate to black women? >> what we saw is racial discrimination in the housing market. study after study but i can tell you one story. , i was with to african-american women that were both homeless is looking for housing. which is a traditional latino neighborhood. and from what they tell me and there was not that had

been they have three young kids. so she said you have a place with a tub? yes it is a liberal bigger and a nicer but then sought to reach for his own hat if a conversation and said wouldn't you know, that? adjust rented. i called the next day. . .

relevant to that question but what matters is if you live with kids or not and your odds of receiving the judgment triples so it is i would rather work with use of the question you asked there's two pieces of it. i'm curious about your influences and i haven't read

your book but it's different in that there is no statistical analysis. the tradition of people that are writing about poverty from the ground level had a deep mark on me. there was a tradition of the iconography especially related to poverty. it is an amazing 1967 corner. there is a slim prospects incredibly observationally brilliant economic or fee.

>> your powerpoint display ranks of the brutality. as for the cost when you walk by a site where there's been an eviction what you see is not just somebody's belongings but their life and your photograph of the belongings raises a very practical question but nonetheless a question. what's on the street is not just furniture. it's baby pictures, mementos from family members etc. that will never be recovered because

by the time the person gets back they are all destroyed. there was a time here in the city that would pick up belongings and store them. >> one thing i didn't realize going back into it is that you lose often not just your home but your things and possessions. you get a share eviction and it means your things get thrown on the sidewalk and your things get taken by the mover. which means you have to pay $375 to get it back and then it goes back every month after that. it's a business. i spent a lot of time with moving companies in milwaukee.

the owners told me 70% of the moves just get thrown in the dump so it is a racing possessions, too. >> i appreciate this book and i know a lot of the neighborhoods you are talking about. i wonder if you can talk for the impact was on the kids and their schooling across the different homes. >> it is leaving a deep scar on the next generation and when he's living in a homeless shelter outside of town in 17 consecutive days he was absent from school there was a higher

order needs but that's how i leaned it. she got the kids in school and then there was a crisis that emerged again and again. we will not be able to allow kids to reach their full potential if we keep batting them around school here and there and everywhere because their mom doesn't have enough food to last the end of the month because so much is spent by housing. we need a lot of research on this and it is obvious to me that this is fundamental to improving the inner cities education. >> incredibly powerful presentation. i want to ask two questions. you spoke to us on pictures and i'm curious if anyone has approached you or if you have lifted them up in other venues. i'm not sure if it is through a

tour. you also asked what are we going to do about it. we have the voucher and we can do this. is there anyone taking up that mantle or groups coming together it is a political season so those are two fundamental questions. >> my wife and i started this organization called just shelter >> this was not a setup. [laughter] >> i always look for ways to were given. it does two things. it highlights and emphasizes all over the country a lot of the work going on in affordable housing is bought from neighborhood to neighborhood so if you are in nebraska you can click on the map and see the

organizations plugged in and getting involved but what we are also doing here is allowing people to fill their own story so much of the time when it gets covered in the press i get letters from folks that have been like this is my story this is what i went through. i've gotten more of those and we have to broadcast that so if you have experienced and want to share your story you can contribute in your own way so that's one thing we are doing this a lot. policymakers when confronted with the fact that the country has more and worse than any other rich democracy will respond by saying jobs. hillary clinton wants to raise

wages. that is half of the solution. it's not just low income but it's also extracted markets. we need to address this for multiple angles that would help solving and addressing the housing crisis any other poverty solution is going to fall flat. >> it was found to be amazing what you laid out. what i wanted to ask, you went to a certain level with the people you interviewed and what that.

did you think of moving onto the next level of politicians like the members of the council, the members of the state legislature and further up because i see them as being able to influence and affect policy only if this kind of information has been pushed into their faces. there are no easy answers to this i'm sure you are well aware of it but what forceful methods can be used to make the population unaware. with all of the nonsense that has been talked about it here there on here that were poverty mentioned very much and between

now and the time the leader is elected we are going to hear it. >> writing a book and having a conversation like this is a greater fan and i think that i'm a bit more hopeful and we are having a conversation about inequality that's going on on both sides of the aisle we see poverty plans from people of the various political persuasions and i'm kind of encouraged that we have reached the point that we are very unsettled by the level and a lot of us want to do something about it. there is a reason to be optimistic. we have slums in the larger cities and poor folks. we took them on and won that

battle. i am not naïve about how much further we need to go on causing problems. i lived in the park most of the time i didn't have hot water and i told my landlord i'm a writer and i'm going to write about you so imagine what my neighbors had to deal with a. now we are facing this other huge problem which is the fact it's getting harder and harder to look forward with a roof over your head. are there things we can do on the local level and interventions the answer is yes. one important thing we can do i think is to extend legal help to the families facing eviction. they have no right to a lawyer in civil court so in many around the country 90% of tenants don't have lawyers and 90% of landlords do. she has to go to the housing and face a lawyer.

would you go or what i ago, i don't know if i would enable the folks don't go. we can change that on the local level and provide families with legal assistance and make an investment upstream to stem the tide of the consequences that we we reap for the evictions downstream. >> was financed to ask was when you approached more high-level politicians such as if the legislature, with a responsive and did they say they had other more important issues to deal

with plaques >> we didn't know the extent of this problem, i didn't know going into it. we didn't know how many people were getting evicted. so i think there's still a lot to learn and the message of the centrality of how it's working its way. we will have time for someone lined up. >> i am from milwaukee. [laughter] i was a tenant organizer but since then, i go back every two years in october before the

election including the neighborhoods you speak of. i am struck and stunned by the overall reservation i see in that city. a working-class city where 20 years ago you could get a welding job and make $8 an hour which was big money then or ten or 15. today, that's all over. i just wanted to ask you the political consequences of the housing crisis i see when i go door-to-door and try to find borders there've been efforts to develop and create support in these communities particularly around the obama campaign. every year i go back they are gone. they've moved. nobody knows where they are. this is how you end up with scott walker. this is how the state and the

progressive has become a right-wing battleground in part because of the administration. i just wondered if you could speak to that. frankly the political consequences of what i see is the destruction of just of housing stock that the community and the people that inhabit it. >> some of the neighborhoods in milwaukee have been extremely high eviction rate. in some neighborhoods it is one out of four households in the neighborhood is gone every year so how do we build a community with that when people are buzzing in and out of it and how do we allow people to invest in their community, so i think you're absolutely right to articulate the political consequences of housing instability. it's also the fact that these neighborhoods have been neglected for decades.

and the folks that see so clearly their own neighbors pain which you have to because you are working together to make ends meet its harder to see their political potential. you're right about what the other cities have experienced between 1979 and 1939 deluxe for jobs during the great depression. but i also want to say i saw in the lives of the families the book was about but i also saw a lot of brilliance and generosity when i was with the salvation army homeless shelter for homeless and they were eating lunch at this mcdonald's downtown. then a boy walks in and he had

dirty clothes on and it looks like somebody hit him in the face. he looked really bad. he didn't go out to order but he went around the table looking for scraps. krystal turned to him and said what have you got into these homeless women pooled their money and went up to the boy and bought him lunch and krystal gave him a big hug and said he is on his way to. you see that in the stories of the people that we love. it reminds me of how gracefully people like kristol used to be reduced to their hardships. one final comment.

we are going to see the consequences because of these kind of requirements. how can you have a an authorized governmental id when literally you don't know where you're going to be living next month's >> i'm not from milwaukee. [laughter] i would like to point you back to the tool and you personally as an economic or because i think it is interesting as a quantitative policy pressure to change the way people are using people in communities and there was a question earlier about humanizing the owners and the landlord and i kind of want to ask more about humanizing the impoverished or homeless professors that teach and that they're always worried about the poverty at the end there's been a history of the urban economic

affairs who continually gone to the cities and have done this whole process while being helpful and have somewhat perpetuated and reproduced norms by fetishizing the communities they were using. so i wondered how you wrestled with lifting up the voices of the poor while continuing to humanize those and not exaggerate that for policy changes. >> academic and not ever has a duty to write about life in its full complexity as much as it is his or her ability to do so. so, that means writing about human suffering and also to encourage. it means writing about mistakes people make but also moments of beautiful generosity. and i think that i took the

stories extremely seriously. the responsibility of writing someone's story for me is one of the deepest and profound honors of my life. and so i think that putting in this book times where i was with the family and the housing list of end of the landlord was just neglecting their place. it was february and they asked me to try to kind of go down in the basement to see if i could see if their teeth was off to see if i could do something with the furnace. i go down to the basement and i don't know what i'm doing. do the same comic furnace thing, take the furnace or something. and i came back up and it got me a birthday cake. they wanted to celebrate my birthday. that's in the book.

and i think that writing about people's lives in that way helps us both confront the full trauma and sadness but also validate and recognize the beauty and complexity of folks down the line as well. it's important state in a close stating a close contact with folks in the book. they've read the book long before you have and so i went over every part of the book with them. i read it to some people. some people read it to me. we had long conversations and that process was extremely important to me not only for getting the facts right also making sure that i get the essence right. >> i went first to go to thank you and congratulate you and

encourage you. the elements that you have presented that i see here is you have highlighted eviction as a powerful symbol that touches on and embraces the whole issue of affordable housing. i've worked on this for a long time in washington and the churches built the affordable housing in downtown washington where we were located. i would like to encourage you to try to identify who bring this powerful story. but on the affordable housing is so dramatic. they live in washington and you know it is just incredible.

i want to encourage you. that's all i'm saying. and i will in my part context i have took the idea idea after whoever i can out there that whoever i can find to listen. but i would see this as such a powerful tool to tell a story that needs to be a high-profile story and i will do everything i can to rally support and there needs to be legislation that addresses and money from the sources that these individuals have indicated. i i encourage you and bless you and am praying for you. >> thank you very much. [applause]

>> are they partly because they are poor but i wonder who becomes a landlord in this, how do these people take up how did that happen and what is their story, where do they come from? >> many are second, third, fourth generation landlords and it comes in their blood so to speak. it's traditionally been the way of the immigrant communities for the foothold through the middle class america. in milwaukee for example there's this thing called polish flats and that is one way that they kind of were going to earn extra money. so i think that's kind of tradition has been passed down

through a lot of landlords have it with them. she saw herself as an entrepreneur and i think the landlords share that kind of quality. they can strike out in nothing but their own junction and living. there's folks like my landlord at the trailer park that have to have this other thing which is like the stomach for it. it can be difficult work. >> i showed up a little late so forgive me if this has already been covered. i am from dc and i have covered housing issues as a reporter. one is that legal clinic for the homeless. they are the ones that fight the dc government on the issues and

the homeless shelter where people slept on the hallways and abandoned hospital in the next trash cans and were physically assaulted sexually harassed. we live in a place with her visible ice makers and we also put our homeless families in the been in the hospital. that's where we live and we should all remember that. you might have already interested that the impact of the section and the impact of number six and with the data to put the data to the housing ability that does seem like we replaced terrible public housing and section eight was an unstable way of getting people housing because you mentioned this and i want to get your take on that.

>> so we could talk about the incident outs of the different policy and i think that for tonight but i want to come back to is the scale. this kind of amazing things going on with housing and building the cool affordable housing units in the into the green public housing, great, not meeting the need we just need something to scale and there's no study that shows you can offer housing and equal quality for lower cost. the doctors have a more efficient way to do that. we can make the program more cost efficient. there's things in the books that have suggestions that this is our best way to help this majority. so if this section eight public

housing whatever it is, we need something. >> [inaudible] it's like i can feed my kids and stay in my home we know from statistics that housing folks live in the neighborhoods. we know they are able to buy enough food and savings into the research in the work is pretty mixed. there's not a lot of evidence of that and the status quo is a bigger disincentive to work when you can't hold onto the house long enough to put onto your job. so i think that for me that is the bottom line.

>> we have time for two questions. >> i want to thank you very much for writing this book. i grew up with my mother in the 80s and 90s and we lived in multiple homeless shelters and we were evicted quite a bit. it is healing for me to see your work. talking about children and the trauma that is a part of poverty that people very rarely talk about. do you have a sense of how badly the rates have changed throughout the country can have they gotten worse or better and do you have the sense as an expert whether or not it is something that is expanding in the field of study? >> i want to say thank you for sharing that with this room.

that doesn't take a little courage and that's a beautiful thing that you can own that and give voice to that. >> there's a lot of folks doing poverty today working on issues of mass incarceration and decriminalization of labor market discrimination. there's a lot of folks trying to understand the best way to make a big impact on this issue. first was about trauma and i think that's something i've experienced when my family's home that were closed.

i didn't experience that with any sort of political mindset. i just felt shameful when i showed the manuscript she said i see a lot of strength and also a lot of mistakes. she misses an appointment with a caseworker and she is evicted. part of the narrative is to frame those and showed that we make mistakes but the consequences are totally out of whack. to show this is affecting the tens of hundreds of thousands of millions of folks to give a new way of understanding understanding if it isn't within the shame or embarssment and the concept of the national

crisis have things gotten better there isn't a lot of debate. we need better numbers on where it's happening are they going up or down" cities are doing a good job to stem the tide. i can tell you when you read the account from the 30s and 40s it looks weird and scandalous. remember the scene where there's a couple evicted and everybody gathers around to move the family back in and there is a powerful moment in the book that's how it used to be. it said something because a thousand people showed up to protest that's what it used to be like that now it is a

full-time job and there are hundreds and hundreds that collect information from sun up to sun down in the cities people have grown used to the effects of the curb so we need you but i think the problem is getting worse. >> don't know what the experience has been that if it hasn't been extensive, i invite you to a rally tomorrow morning. the coalition for the nonprofit housing and economic development is meeting at the methodist church. they would love to meet you and there are thousands of people. this is our opportunity to move the city forward.

the mayor is committed and the council is committed. if you are around 10:00, 16th street. >> you heard it here. [applause] >> thank you so much. we have books by the register. [applause] >> [inaudible conversations]