"I think seeing that kind of deprivation and scarcity and just cruelty really does drive me," he says. "The hard part wasn't living in those places. The hard part was leaving them." He went to check on a family who had been evicted, only to find out it was all a ruse.
RUFUS GRISCOM: Could you share with us your broader mission and how your new book, “Poverty, by America,” supports that mission?
MATTHEW DESMOND: I want to end poverty. I want to be part of the movement that’s growing around the country not to treat it but to cure it, not to reduce it but to abolish it. And I say that because we can. We can, as a country, put an end to all this scarcity and deprivation in our midst.