I wanted to write a book about poverty that wasn't only about the poor. I was looking for some sort of narrative device, a phenomenon that would allow me to draw in a lot of different players. I was like, 'Shoot, eviction does that.'

The cost of evictions varies a lot, but it could be for landlords an expensive process as well. Among the costs for landlords as well is the emotional costs of an eviction.

Tenants don't have any right to court-appointed attorneys in civil court, so they're either facing their landlord - or his or her attorney - alone, or they just don't show up. That reflects a severe power imbalance.

Trying to learn from communities and engage with policy makers and community organizers all across the country is really important to me.

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.

I come from a specific tradition of sociology, which is urban ethnography.

Fire itself is very beautiful, and there's an attachment to fire that firefighters have.

Kids increase people's risk of eviction.

If you have someone who is paying 88 percent of her income on rent, and we have laws that allow a landlord to evict a tenant who falls behind under those circumstances, eviction becomes an inevitability.

I felt that writing about peoples' lives was a heck of a responsibility, and I wanted to know them in a deep way.

Just as incarceration has come to define the lives of low-income black men, eviction is defining the lives of low-income black women.

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.

If you look at the American Household Survey, the last time we did that in 2013, renters in over 2.8 million homes thought they would be evicted soon.

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.

Home is the wellspring of personhood, where our identity takes root; where civic life begins. America is supposed to be a place where you can better yourself, your family, and your community.

The standard of 'affordable' housing is that which costs roughly 30 percent or less of a family's income. Because of rising housing costs and stagnant wages, slightly more than half of all poor renting families in the country spend more than 50 percent of their income on housing costs, and at least one in four spends more than 70 percent.

Home is the center of life. It's the wellspring of personhood. It's where we say we're ourselves.

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.

Children didn't shield families from eviction: They exposed them to it.

The things you're closest to are often the things you know least about.

The home is the center of life - a refuge from the grind of work, pressure of school, menace of the streets, a place to be ourselves.

I think that we value fairness in this country. We value equal opportunity. Without a stable home, those ideals really fall apart.

Poverty is a relationship that involves a lot of folks, rich and poor alike. I was looking for something that brought a lot of different people in a room. Eviction does that, embroils landlords and tenants, lawyers and social workers.

Do we believe housing is a right and that affordable housing is part of what it should mean to be an American? I say yes.