How did the author become interested in poverty?

Matthew Desmond, the author of Evicted, is a sociology professor at Harvard who teaches a class called "Poverty in America." Poverty is clearly a very important subject to him, both on a personal and a professional level. He first became interested in the subject while he was an undergraduate at ASU's Barrett Honors College in his native Arizona. During this time he volunteered at Habitat for Humanity, and wrote a thesis on homelessness.
Desmond came from a regular home, better off than those individuals and families he studies in the book. Yet he too has experience with eviction. His own parents lost the family home in a foreclosure; he helped them move out. What this shows is the scale of the problem facing America regarding evictions. They used to be rare, but now affect more and more communities right across the United States. Desmond's own experiences, combined with meticulous research, make Evicted all the more effective as an indictment of a broken housing market.