I love Milwaukee, the rust belt. It's a very special part of America that's full of promise but also full of pain, where poverty is acute.

I left college with a deep sense that I needed to understand poverty more.

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.

The face of the eviction epidemic is moms and kids, especially poor moms from predominantly Latino and African American neighborhoods.

You see one eviction, and you're overcome, but then there's another one and another one and another one.

Even growing up the way I did, I was shocked by the level of poverty I saw as a college student. I thought the best way to understand it was to get close to it on the ground level.

Poor families are living above their means, in apartments they cannot afford. The thing is, those apartments are already at the bottom of the market.

An eviction is an incredibly time consuming and stressful event.

There are moving companies specializing in evictions, their crews working all day, every weekday.

You do learn how to cope from those who are coping.

African American women, and moms in particular, are evicted at disproportionately high rates.

It's true that eviction affects the young and the old, the sick and the able-bodied. It affects white folks and black folks and Hispanic folks and immigrants. If you spend time in housing court, you see a really diverse array of folks there.

When you meet people who are spending 70, 80 percent of their income on rent, eviction becomes much more of an inevitability than the result of personal irresponsibility.

Eviction is part of a business model at the bottom of the market.

A community that sees so clearly its own disadvantage or its own hardships also has a harder time seeing its potential: its ability to work together to change the community and change their lives.

In a way, no one's harder on the poor than the poor themselves.

If we take a hard look at what poverty is, its nature, it's not pretty - it's full of trauma.

A lot of people didn't know just what eviction does to people, how it really sets their life on a different and much more difficult path, acting not like a condition of poverty but a cause of it.

The texture and hardship of poverty and eviction is something that I think left the deepest impression on me, and I hope that I try to convey a little bit of that to the reader.

It is very rare in the life of an intellectual to see your support network show up all at once.

I came to the realization of how essential a role housing plays in the lives of the poor.

Eviction comes with a record, too, and just as a criminal record can bar you from receiving certain benefits or getting a foothold in the labor market, the record of eviction comes with consequences as well. It can bar you from getting good housing in a good neighborhood.

Arguably, the families most at need of housing assistance are systematically denied it because they're stamped with an eviction record. Moms and kids are bearing the brunt of those consequences.

Just strictly from a business standpoint, kids are a liability to landlords, and they actually provoke evictions.

Ours was not always a nation of homeowners; the New Deal fashioned it so, particularly through the G.I. Bill of Rights.

Differences in homeownership rates remain the prime driver of the nation's racial wealth gap.

There were evictions that I saw that I know I'll never forget. In one case, the sheriff and the movers came up on a house full of children. The mom had passed away, and the children had just gone on living there. And the sheriff executed the eviction order - moved the kids' stuff out on the street on a cold, rainy day.

If we continue to tolerate this level of poverty in our cities, and go along with eviction as commonplace in poor neighborhoods, it's not for a lack of resources. It will be a lack of something else.

Eviction causes loss. You lose not only your home but also your possessions, which are thrown onto the curb or taken by movers, and often you can't keep up payments.

If he doesn't follow through with actions, he's either selfish or a liar. Neither makes him sound like The One, does it?

Boldness is sexy, especially when it's done with a wink.

A little flattery goes a long way.

If you look like you're hiding something, we're more likely to swipe left.

Firstly, there is no perfect man. Looking for that it worse than starting the race badly, it means you're in the wrong race. What women should be searching for is their ideal man - i.e. the one whose values, beliefs and outlook on life synergise with their own.

A man who is invested takes the time to get to know you well, and his gifts will be a testament to his expert grasp of your likes and dislikes.

Ghosting's a horrible thing, isn't it? It doesn't feel good, it feels like a rejection. And what's more, it feels like a rejection where there's no closure.

How do you bust out of the friend zone? It's a horrible place to be when you end up there unintentionally with someone you have a romantic interest in.

The guy who wants to spend all his time with you may seem romantic, but he's also the guy who'll try to stop you from doing anything that doesn't involve him. If he presses you to ditch hobbies, passions, and friends, it's time to ditch him.

Guys aren't used to out-of-the-blue compliments.

The right man applauds your potential, he doesn't stifle it.

If you are in a toxic relationship, that poisons you everywhere else in your life.

Research shows that making eye contact is a powerful draw for guys - even in photos. Just don't mistake duck face for flirty.

We live in a very mollycoddled society where the slightest bit of discomfort is seen as wrong, but that discomfort is there for a reason. It's supposed to trigger some form of action, some form of change, a realization of a truth - something, and I think the self-help world has you believing that you should be happy all the time.

A friend of mine once earnestly said to his girlfriend, 'You look so pretty tonight,' and she replied, 'You're such a dork.' Her deflection was a total turn-off. It didn't make him feel attractive, nor did it encourage him to keep complimenting her.

The easy way to make your texts sexier? Lose the question marks.

You'd never be able to appreciate what's good in life if you've never experienced the bad.

Women want to attract a 'high-value' man. If that's the man you want to attract you have to be high value yourself.

Life isn't easy but it's not as complicated as we make it out to be.

Guys don't get as many physical compliments as women do. Tell him his CrossFit habit is paying off. He'll work double time to impress you.

When someone feels truly in love, they feel certain. That means they lose any commitment-phobia and will want to find ways to bring you closer together.