“Every condition exists,” Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote, “simply because someone profits by its existence. This economic exploitation is crystallized in the slum.” Exploitation. Now, there’s a word that has been scrubbed out of the poverty debate.”

Evanston-based sociologist and MacArthur Fellow, Desmond is an authority on housing insecurity in the United States. His work, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning *Evicted*, exposes systemic barriers to stable housing and their ripple effects on families and communities.