Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

Patrice and her three kids move into her mother Doreen’s downstairs two-bedroom apartment after being evicted by Sherrena. This means eight people—plus one dog, Coco—are living there. Previously, for seven years, the family lived in a five-bedroom house in a better neighborhood. They fell behind on rent, however, due to Doreen going to New Orleans to volunteer after Hurricane Katrina. Then, a nearby shooting resulted in the police calling Child Protective Services (CPS), who called DNS, and the family was evicted. Desperate, they rented the two duplex apartments from Sherrena. They hated the apartments as soon as they saw them.

The back door is off its hinges at Doreen’s apartment. Both the sink in the kitchen and the bathtub don’t drain. The windows are cracked. The ceiling sags from an upstairs leak. They must aggressively plunge the toilet every time it’s flushed. Doreen calls Sherrena about these problems, but she is often out of town, vacationing with Quentin. Doreen hires a plumber to unclog all the drains and deducts the $150 for that from her rent. Sherrena threatens to evict her, so Doreen quits paying rent, saving the money for the next move, once they are forced to make it.

The difference in cost between most expensive and least expensive rent in Milwaukee is not that great, only about $270, so it’s not that being poor makes housing costs go down. In fact, in the 1920s and 30s, rent in Milwaukee’s black slums cost more than comparable housing in white neighborhoods. The poor maintenance and high rent is actually a business plan:

For many landlords, it was cheaper to deal with the expense of eviction than to maintain their properties; it was possible to skimp on maintenance if tenants were perpetually behind; and many poor tenants would be perpetually behind because their rent was too high (75).

As Sherrena tells her tenants, who are behind on rent when they ask for repairs, “If I give you a break, you give me a break” (76). And, if tenants do call a city inspector, that will earn them a quick eviction notice based on being behind on rent.

The stakes are raised when Doreen’s nineteen-year-old daughter, Natasha, becomes pregnant. Natasha is determined not to raise her baby in the duplex, and the family is afraid she’ll move out with the baby’s father, Malik. By all accounts, Malik is a good man, but based on Doreen and Patrice’s dealings with the multiple fathers of their own children, they put no faith in him. In fact, Doreen considers moving the whole family to Tennessee the next summer, after they’ve traveled there for a family reunion. 

After receiving their eviction notice for being behind on rent plus letting Ned and Pam stay with them after their own eviction, Scott and Teddy must figure out what they’re going to do. Teddy, fifty-two, is partially paralyzed. He contacts his family in Tennessee to come get him. Scott, thirty-eight and a former nurse, is Teddy’s caretaker. He decides this eviction notice is what he needs to put his life in order and quickly finds a job cleaning out repossessed houses.

Scott is a product of rape—his mother was forced into a brief marriage with her attacker to avoid embarrassing her family—who becomes a nurse when he is thirty-one. For a while, things go well as he has a nice apartment, work he finds fulfilling, and an active social life in Milwaukee’s gay community. After hurting his back at work, however, he receives a prescription for Percocet, a powerful opioid painkiller, and becomes addicted. To supply his addiction, Scott begins stealing painkillers from patients and, after being caught, loses his nursing license. He winds up at the Lodge, where he meets Teddy, and they move into the trailer park together. One day, a neighbor sees him in withdrawals—suffering from “the sick”—and begins to sell Scott heroin to inject. 

One Saturday morning, Lenny, Office Susie, and Tobin go to spend the day at Milwaukee’s Management Training Program. Karen, the trainer, emphasizes the importance of screening applicants, having written leases because sixty to seventy percent of rental agreements in Wisconsin are verbal. Karen tells Tobin and the rest of the group to always remember the property belongs to them, not the people renting it. She makes them say this last point aloud together, to emphasize it: “The voices in the room went up in unison, a proud and powerful chorus: ‘This is my property. Myyyyy property!’” (91). 

After Teddy is gone, Scott works as hard as he can to make money for his own impending move. While he’s at work during the day, other trailer park residents begin to go through the trailer, taking what they want from it. He considers it a gift they don’t take his prize possession: a plastic container full of mementos from his former life, including photographs, diplomas, and other hard evidence that he didn’t always live the way he does now. 

Two days before Christmas, Sherrena arrives at Room 400, home of the Milwaukee County Small Claims Court, in the Milwaukee County Courthouse. Sherrena is here for eviction hearings and related money judgments against multiple tenants. Typically, at least 70% of tenants do not attend these hearings (due to embarrassment, not wanting to miss work, or not understanding what these proceedings mean) and lose by default. Evicted tenants are usually poor and spend at least 50% of their income on rent. Another third spend 80% of their income on rent. Of those evicted, only one in six have another place lined up to go to.

Arleen shows up for her eviction hearing while Patrice does not. This is Arleen’s second formal eviction—the first was sixteen years earlier—but on average she has moved once a year for the past twenty years and has been evicted multiple times. Most of the time, however, landlords didn’t bother with a formal eviction that would go on her record. Other times, she rented under an assumed name.

Sherrena wants to immediately evict Arleen as well as receive $5,000 for property damage. (Landlords know these property damage judgments will likely never be collected, but it’s a chance for money in the future if/when a former tenant needs to—and can—repair their credit rating.) Arleen doesn’t protest her eviction and loses this portion of her case. The judge, however, balks at the additional $5,000 as well as evicting Arleen and her sons before Christmas. Sherrena is livid: “It’s still not fair. Nobody does anything to these tenants. It’s always the landlord. This system is flawed […] But whatever. I’ll never see the money. These people are deadbeats” (102).    

Sherrena accepts a deal that allows Arleen to avoid an eviction on her record if she moves out before the first of the year. The property damages are also reduced to $1,285. After the hearing, Sherrena gives Arleen a ride home and complains about having to continually call a plumber to clean Doreen Hinkston’s sink due to ramen noodle soup and grease being poured down it. She gives Arleen some advice: “[I]f you ever thinking about becoming a landlord, don’t. It’s a bad deal. Get the short end of the stick every time” (107). Arleen steps out of the car and wishes Sherrena a Merry Christmas.