Gillian B. White: The book focuses on stories of eviction, but on a more macro level, the book is about poverty and inequality. Why did you decide to use eviction as the lens for those issues?

Matthew Desmond: I wanted to try to write a different poverty book, to focus on not just a place or a group of people, but a set of relationships. I thought eviction was the best way to do that. It brings landlords and judges and tenants together in this process that you can follow over time. I realized not only that had we overlooked this very central aspect of poverty, but eviction was coursing through the American city and acting as a cause, not just a condition, of poverty.

White: Why did you pick Milwaukee?

Desmond: A lot of the stories about urban America tend to be written on the margins. We focus a lot on these big global cities—New York, San Francisco—or we focus on cities that are having the toughest time—Detroit, Newark, Camden. But if you want to write a story that has a shot at representing an experience that’s very broad, Milwaukee is a very good candidate. The numbers that we crunched in Milwaukee are very similar to the numbers in Kansas City, Cleveland, Chicago, and other cities that I’ve looked at. So I think that the book is set in Milwaukee, but it tells a broader American story.

White: I was really struck by the granular detail that you were able to include, such as conversations between an evicted mother named Arlene, and the young woman her family stayed with while they tried to find a new home. What was the process for your research and how long did you spend in the two locations?

Desmond: I began by moving into the trailer park on the far South side of the city, and I lived there for about five months. And then after several months in the trailer park, I moved into the rooming house in the inner city and I lived there for about nine or 10 months. After I moved away from Milwaukee, I kept in close contact with the families and the landlords and went back as often as I could.

White: At one point you share that your parents lost their home in foreclosure. How did that impact the way you looked at home loss and the economic issues related to it?

Desmond: I don’t know if it did. I do know after that happened, there was a period in my life where I started getting more and more interested in poverty. When I was confronted with just the bare facts of poverty and inequality in America, it always disturbed and confused me. I thought [poverty and inequality] was not only unnecessary, but also out of character and out of line with our broader ideals.

White: How do you think it goes against the broader ideals of America?

Desmond: I think that we value fairness in this country. We value equal opportunity. Without a stable home, those ideals really fall apart. 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. A finding of the book is that eviction causes job loss. So for folks that are working for low wages, the lack of affordable housing can cause them to make mistakes at work and eventually lose their jobs. That seems out of step with what we as a nation feel is right, and fair.