Evicted

"Even in the most desolate areas of American cities, evictions used to be rare. They used to draw crowds. Eviction riots erupted during the Depression, even though the number of poor families who faced eviction each year was a fraction of what it is today... These days, there are sheriff squads whose full-time job is to carry out eviction and foreclosure orders. There are moving companies specializing in evictions, their crews working all day, every weekday." So writes Matthew Desmond in his brilliant and important book, Eviction: Poverty and Profit in the American City.

This book copped the Pulitzer Prize and was one of the New York Times Best Books of the Year, but it's a tough read. Not because of the writing, but because of the subject. Desmond embeds himself among the poor of Milwaukee, following them as they move from place to place, applying for apartments that are not fit for human habitation. They are evicted for the slightest provocation by ruthless landlords, who are only business people. They end up in a cycle of poverty, paying up to ninety percent of their monthly income for housing, undermining themselves by bad choices or drugs, and children grow up this way, moving constantly, often not knowing where they will sleep that night.

Desmond covers the North Side, or the black part of town. One of the main people he follows is Arleen, who has two sons. Honestly I can't remember how many places she lives during the course of the book. He also follows Sherrene and Quentin, landlords (or slumlords, if you will), who are millionaires by buying up apartment buildings in the bad part of town. They are often rat holes, but if you call the city on them they'll kick you out. Here's just one example: "The Hinkstons’ rear door was off its hinges. The walls were pockmarked with large holes. There was one bathroom. Its ceiling sagged from an upstairs leak, and a thin blackish film coated its floor. The kitchen windows were cracked. A few dining-room windows had disheveled miniblinds, broken and strung out in all
directions. Patrice hung heavy blankets over the windows facing the street, darkening the house. A small television sat on a plywood dresser in the living room, next to a lamp with no shade."

He gives equal time to white people in a trailer park, who are often uncharitably called white trash. Their living conditions are equally disgusting, and the owner, known as Tobin, is quick to demand rent but slow to fix things. He has favorites, though, and you can make a deal with him, so when he brings in a professional management company the tenants are nervous. Desmond shadows a woman named Laraine, who is incapable of managing her money, and who ends up evicted with her belongings in storage, which she can not access.

Reading this book gave the willies. I'm a person who has almost always lived paycheck to paycheck, but I'm never been evicted, I've never had power turned off, and I've never not known where I'm sleeping on a given night. But as I read these horror stories I remembered the saying, "There but for the grace of God go I," because I felt like I was a few clicks away from that. Las Vegas is full of trailer parks and RV parks, and also residency hotels (apparently Milwaukee hasn't tried those), where I lived for about six months among drug dealers and prostitutes.

The common sense solution to this is to do a few things: enable the poor to have access to housing lawyers just like criminal defendants do, and to pump money into affordable housing. It's interesting to hear about the people like Sherrene and the sheriffs who put people out--how do the sleep at night? It's a job, but man. One guy evicted his own daughter.

As I write this the Senate is going about screwing the middle class, and poor people certainly won't be helped either. It's not necessarily a lack of work that is hurting these people--it's stagnant wages versus an increase in rent. As Jimmy McMillan says, "The rent is too damn high!"