Street roots., July 08, 2016, Page 5, Image 5

Street Roots • July 8-14, 2016
EVICTED, from page 4
poverty.
Desmond searched for studies on
evictions in our society. He wanted to know
the demographics of eviction, the frequency
and the consequences. He was also
interested in what poor people were
sacrificing when they had to spend so much
money on housing.
As part of his dissertation fieldwork, he
moved right into the heart of poverty in
Milwaukee in 2008, living first in a trailer
park and then later in a rooming house. He
lived among those suffering economic and
emotional hardship, struggling to get
enough money to pay for food, clothing and
a place to live.
He discovered that poverty is a
relationship “involving poor and rich people
alike,” he wrote. “To understand poverty, I
needed to understand that relationship. This
sent me searching for a process that bound
poor and rich people together in mutual
dependence and struggle. Eviction was such
a process.”
Many people facing eviction, Desmond
said, spend 70 to 80 percent of their income
on “homes not fit for human habitation.”
Desmond found that the median monthly
household income of tenants experiencing
eviction in Milwaukee was $935. The rent
money owed by those facing eviction was
“about that much.”
One in eight renters experience at least
one forced move, Desmond said. In
Milwaukee, 16,000 adults and children are
evicted each year. He reports that 16
families are evicted through court
proceedings daily.
Among the people we meet in “Evicted”
are Lamar and his sons. Lamar is a double­
amputee who lost his legs to frostbite while
experiencing homelessness and crack
addiction. While recovering from addiction,
he lived in a two-bedroom apartment that
had “maggots sprouting from unwashed
dishes in the sink.”
Lamar’s income doing handyman jobs
was $628 a month, $550 of which was
needed to pay his rent He was left with
$2.19 a day for everything else his family
needed to survive. Ultimately, like all the
other tenants in this book, Lamar and his
sons were evicted.
We also meet Crystal, a young evangelical
Christian with bipolar disorder who turned
to prostitution as a way to earn money to
live.
Arlene is a mother of two children who is
struggling to provide for her family on $20 a
month after rent. Her two sons are among
the multitude of children suffering from the
devastating effects of living in substandard
housing and the transient, unstable life that
eviction creates.
“Eviction creates deep and jagged scars
to the next generation,” Desmond said. “It
affects their opportunity to create
meaningful relationships with peers and
teachers.”
Desmond also wrote about a 54-year-old
woman named Larraine. She spent a
month’s worth of food stamps on a meal of
News
Page 5
children living in their units. Children make
noise and lead to concerns about lead
poisoning. Landlords don’t want to draw
attention to the horrid conditions they pass
off as livable.
The temptation is to cast landlords as the
evil, greedy villains. Desmond said that
would be a simplification, pointing out the
complexities of the landlord-tenant
relationship.
These families and the landlords are a
microcosm of life situations played out in
cities and towns around the country.
Desmond writes, “This study takes place in
the heart of a major American city, not in an
isolated Polish village or a brambly Montana
town or on the moon.”
Desmond’s work on the poverty and
housing problem is not done. More eviction
data are needed from across the country.
We need to see “just how big a problem this
is,” he said.
“The number of evictions in Milwaukee is
equivalent to the number in other cities,
and the people summoned to housing court
poverty through the eyes of eight families and
in Milwaukee look a lot like those
a couple of landlords in Milwaukee.
summoned in Charleston and Brooklyn.”
It’s not just a growing problem in the
United States; it also exists in cities such as
London and Berlin.
lobster tails, shrimp, crab, pie and Pepsi. At
To help understand and resolve the
first, Desmond questioned why she would
eviction problem, Desmond thinks we need
do that He reasoned, “There was no
to look at what cities do right and what
amount of skimping and squandering that is
needs to change. This is an ongoing
going to get herself above the poverty line.”
process.
Desmond noted, “We don’t live on bread
Last fall, the Portland City Council voted
alone - nor should we expect poor people to
do that” Larraine was trying to treat herself to impose a 90-day notice requirement to
tenants before they receive a rate increase
as middle-class and affluent people treat
of 5 percent or more, and for no-cause
themselves.
evictions. These no-cause evictions make it
“It is not spending that makes her poor,”
legal for any landlord in Oregon to evict a
he added. “It is poverty that makes her
tenant for no reason at all. It has been used
sometimes throw money away.”
to clear out entire buildings in Portland in
Once someone is living below the poverty
order to replace them with higher-paying
line, many people feel there is very little
tenants, sometimes more than doubling in
amount of hope or help to get out, and the
rent It also means that the eviction does
system typically perpetuates rather than
not go to court, with no violations to prove
helps solve the problem.
or recourse offered. It’s a done deal.
Desmond also spent time with Scott, who
No-cause evictions have been noted as a
had been a nurse until his opioid addiction
priority for Portland Mayor-elect Ted
cost him his license and led to his eviction.
Wheeler.
Unlike the others Desmond writes about,
Desmond said in his book: “Whatever our
Scott was one of the fortunate ones who put
way out of this mess, one thing is certain -
his life back together. He found sobriety and
this degree of inequality, this withdrawal of
permanent housing and returned to nursing
opportunity, this cold denial of basic need,
with his reinstated license.
this endorsement of pointless suffering - by
Desmond also takes us to another side of
no American value is this situation justified.
the story: the world of the landlords.
No moral code or ethical principle, no piece
Sherrena Tarver is a former
of Scripture or holy teaching can be
schoolteacher who turned slumlord as a
summoned to defend what we have allowed
means to make a lot of money. At times, she
our country to become.”
shows understanding and sympathy for her
“We have a long ways to go,” he said. “We
struggling tenants. At other times, she is
make slow leaps to equality.”
ruthless, evicting Arleen and her sons a
couple of days before Christmas.
Courtesy pfINSP.ngo / Spare Change News
“Love doesn’t pay bills,” Tarver said.
Another landlord is Tobin Charney, owner
of a rundown trailer park - one of the worst
in Milwaukee. As with Sherrena, he can, at
times, be sympathetic, but at other times,
he can be merciless.
Desmond writes about how some
landlords choose and deny tenants. For
example, some landlords do not like
Matthew Desmond
is a John L. Loeb
associate professor
of social Sciences
and co-director of
thè Justvce and
Poverty Project.
"To understand poverty, I needed to understand that relationship (between poor •
and rich people). This sent me searching for a process that bound poor and rich
people together in mutual dependence and struggle. Eviction was such a process."
MATTHEW DESMOND, AUTHOR OF "EVICTED"
PHOTO BY MICHAEL KIENITZ