Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

At the beginning of December, at the duplexes off Wright Street, Lamar is trying to work off the late rent he owes Sherrena. He agrees to paint Patrice’s old apartment, but after completing it, she says the work is too shoddy and won’t credit him for it. Lamar agrees to do additional work, and then waits for her verdict. He’s in a bind because Sherrena can always have other people—including crack addicts, or “hypes”—do the work even cheaper. The one bright spot is Kamala, the new upstairs tenant, and her three young daughters. Lamar does his best to help her out and even lends her a hotplate—all she has is a microwave, as landlords don’t like to include appliances due to the cost—after assuring her it won’t cause a fire.

At the end of December, Quentin drives to Trisha’s apartment to pick up her boyfriend, Chris, to do maintenance work. Quentin’s maintenance crews consist of friends, family members, and other acquaintances who are unskilled and desperate for money. They work for cash, usually six to ten dollars per hour. As Sherrena says about them, “[N]o matter how much money it is, it’s money. And they will work, and they will work for low prices” (141). Experienced carpenters, plumbers, and electricians are not a priority, as landlords typically do as little maintenance as possible, usually just enough to pass a DNS inspection before a tenant moves in. 

By now, Quentin’s alcoholic Uncle Verne is almost finished with the painting needed at Patrice’s old apartment, which means Lamar will receive no credit for his efforts. The men argue about how much the work is worth, but after Quentin offers to have someone else finish the job, Verne accepts a lower rate. Quentin pays him in cash and drops him off at a liquor store. Later, Patrice and Natasha visit the apartment and see how much nicer it looks now than before. They don’t realize a basic fact: a renter’s leverage to have work done is at its highest point before moving in. 

Sherrena and Quentin return home after spending eight days in Jamaica, where they took long walks on the beach, rode Jet Skis, and chartered a glass-bottom boat. Back in Milwaukee, Sherrena has forty messages waiting on her cell phone. It’s the first of the month, which means it’s time to collect rent, evict tenants, and move new tenants into vacant properties.

As property values became inflated in the run-up to the housing market collapse, Sherrena would work with tenants on rent-to-own agreements for properties she’d bought at much lower prices. She targeted mentally- and physically-disabled people on SSI, whose credit scores she helped raise, but these were not stories with happy endings. Sherrena admits, “A whole bunch of those people came and bought houses. They ended up losing them […] They just may not have been mentally capable” (157). In addition, while rents increased as property values rose, after the real estate bubble burst they stayed just as high as before. Now, Sherrena usually buys one property a month, looking for ones which offer the most cash flow. All this has led to Sherrena being worth roughly $2 million. She collects $20,000 in monthly rent and, after paying mortgages and related costs, nets about $10,000 a month. Sherrena says: “The ‘hood is good. There’s a lot of money there” (152).   

At the end of January, Sherrena is back at the courthouse to evict Doreen, who is withholding rent money equal to the amount she paid a plumber on her own. Doreen doesn’t yet have a plan to move anywhere else, or the money to do it. This is despite the fact that Natasha is pregnant, and a new family member is about to join the already-overcrowded household. She and Sherrena work out a stipulation agreement for her to pay extra money each month to avoid immediate eviction and to not have an eviction on her record. 

It’s the day before Arleen must move out, and she is trying to figure out where to go. She has four siblings, none of whom can help. Her Aunt Merva is doing well, but Arleen only wants to ask for help in a real emergency, and this eviction doesn’t warrant that.

Sherrena shows up with Crystal Mayberry, a prospective tenant for Arleen’s apartment. Crystal takes the apartment and says Arleen and her sons can stay there until they find a place to go. These types of off-the-cuff arrangements are common: “It was next to impossible for people to survive deep poverty on their own. If you could not rely on your family, you could reach out to strangers, make disposable ties. But it was a lot to ask of someone you barely knew” (162).

Crystal is eighteen, younger than Arleen’s oldest son, and was born prematurely after her crack addict mother was stabbed in the back during a robbery. She entered foster care at age five and never stayed at one home longer than eight months except, save for her five years with her Aunt Rhoda, until she was kicked out. Crystal has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and receives a monthly SSI payment of $754.

Arleen continues to look for a place to live. One afternoon, while she is apartment hunting, Crystal calls her in a rage to say they must be out by that night. Arleen thinks Crystal—who moved in with only three trash bags of clothes and no furniture, money, or food stamps—is mainly hungry. So, she spends $99 on the inner-city “meat deal”: forty-five pounds of chicken legs and wings, turkey wings, bacon, salt pork, pork chops, neck bones, pig feet, and other cuts of meat.

At home, Arleen discovers Jori had been calling Crystal a bitch over and over, after Crystal threatened to lock Jafaris outside. Arleen tries to calm everyone down, and Crystal attempts to call her “spiritual mother,” an older woman she met at a group home, for advice about what to do. She cannot reach her and paces around, looking to the ceiling and praying to God. Finally, Crystal informs them they can stay because she’s filled with the spirit of the Holy Ghost. Arleen comforts Jori in her bedroom and tells him, “But this is what comes when you lose your house. This is what comes” (166).