Evicted (13 page)

As the move went on, the woman slowed down. At first, she had borne down on the emergency with focus and energy, almost running through the house with one hand grabbing something and the other holding up the phone. Now she was wandering through the halls aimlessly, almost drunkenly. Her face had that look. The movers and the deputies knew it well. It was the look of someone realizing that her family would be homeless in a matter of hours. It was something like denial giving way to the surrealism of the scene: the speed and violence of it all; sheriffs leaning against your wall, hands resting on holsters; all these strangers, these sweating men, piling your things outside, drinking water from your sink poured into your cups, using your bathroom. It was the look of being undone by a wave of questions.
What do I need for tonight, for this week? Who should I call? Where is the medication? Where will we go?
It was the face of a mother who climbs out of the cellar to find the tornado has leveled the house.

Every Sunday morning, Larraine stood on the seam that separated the linoleum in the kitchen from the thin green carpet in the living room, looking out the front window for Mr. Dabbs's truck. Mr. Dabbs, a member of her church, would drive into the trailer park, remove his hat, and knock softly on Larraine's door.

When they got to the Southside Church of Christ, a modest brick building with a high-pitched roof roughly a mile and a half northwest of the trailer park, Mr. Dabbs would hold the door open. Larraine would step gracefully in, walking past her photograph on the wall displaying members' portraits. In the sanctuary—a humble space, unadorned—sunlight from large back windows streamed onto the pews. The ceiling bowed up, resembling a great overturned boat. Larraine would take her seat in the second to last pew on the left, next to Susan and Lane. This was where her family had always sat. Susan usually ignored Larraine and pretended to read the bulletin as Pastor Daryl, a large man with red hair and beard, strolled the aisle, shaking hands and slapping backs.

This being a Church of Christ, there was no organ or piano; no acoustic guitar. When the congregation stood to sing “I Stand in Awe” or “O Worship the King,” voices rose up a cappella. Larraine prayed with her palms resting gently on her thighs. When it was time to take the offering, she would let the basket pass. Susan would drop something in.

Recently, Pastor Daryl had been preaching on “The Cost of Discipleship.” He would pace the front of the church, Bible in one hand, PowerPoint clicker in the other, and repeat Jesus's more impossible injunctions: “Anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

“I think one of the biggest shames of Christianity is people that halfway follow Jesus,” Pastor Daryl observed one Sunday. “A partial commitment is a dangerous way to live….You got neighbors around you that need help. You got people that need helping and that need loving and, as Christians, you can be demonstrating that love to them.” During Pastor Daryl's sermons, Larraine would sit still with near-perfect posture, rapt from beginning to end. She loved going to church and had since she was a child.

When Larraine called Pastor Daryl to ask if the church could lend her money so that she might avoid eviction, he said he'd have to think about it. The last time Larraine called, she had said she'd been robbed at gunpoint. Pastor Daryl reached into the church's coffers and gave her a few hundred dollars for the rent. Larraine had been robbed, but not by a stranger with a gun. Susan and Lane's cokehead daughter had broken into her trailer when no one was home. Susan phoned Pastor Daryl to report Larraine's lie.

Pastor Daryl felt torn. On the one hand, he thought it was the job of the church, not the government, to care for the poor and hungry. That, to him, was “pure Christianity.” When it came to Larraine, though, Pastor Daryl believed a lot of hardship was self-inflicted. “She made some stupid choices, spending her money foolishly….Making her go without for a while may be the best thing for her, so that she can be reminded, ‘Hey when I make foolish choices there are consequences.' ” It was easy to go on about helping “the poor.” Helping a poor person with a name, a face, a history, and many needs, a person whose mistakes and lapses of judgment you have recorded—that was a more trying matter.

Pastor Daryl called Susan and told her that Larraine had asked for money to stay her eviction. Susan replied by saying that she didn't think the church should give her sister anything. Pastor Daryl called Larraine back and told her that he wouldn't be helping this time.

In the trailer park office, Lenny was bent over his desk, filling in his rent rolls, when a woman named Britney Baker walked in. She was in her late twenties, wearing cheap sunglasses. Britney pulled her mail out of her box and then turned to Lenny.

“I'm going to pay it, you know,” she said.

“Good,” Lenny said.

“I'm going to pay this week. Don't give me a five-day. I mean, Tobin knows my situation.”

And with that, Britney left. Lenny shook his head and looked back down at his rent rolls, which showed that Britney owed a balance of $2,156.

The relationship between nonpayment of rent and eviction was anything but straightforward. Every month in the trailer park, tenants who owed more than a thousand dollars were not evicted while some who owed far less were.
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If you asked Tobin why, he would say, “You're loyal to the people who are loyal to you. Some people we work with. Some people I wouldn't give a single penny.” Lenny put it like this: “Depends what their excuses are.” With Larraine, Lenny and Tobin felt she was chronically behind. “Every month it's the same thing,” Lenny said. “Ain't got no money.” But every month it was the same thing with Britney Baker as well, and she would not be evicted.

Landlords and building managers weighed several factors when considering whether to evict a tenant. Tenants who could convince landlords that they had money coming down the pike, in the form of a tax refund, say, could avoid eviction. Tenants who fell too far behind without a clear way of getting caught up often could not. But evictions were not simply the consequence of tenants' misbehavior or landlords' financial accounting. Landlords showed considerable discretion over whether to move forward with an eviction, extending leniency to some and withdrawing it from others.
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How a tenant responded to an eviction notice could make the difference. Women tended not to negotiate their eviction like men did, and they were more likely to avoid landlords when they fell behind. These responses did not serve them well.

Landlords and building managers generally hated it when tenants avoided them. “Ducking and dodging,” they called it. When tenants hid from Lenny, it made him angry. “Fuck you!” he once yelled after a tenant peeked through the blinds and refused to answer her door. “You pissed me off now. You're out in five days!”

Like many women in her situation, Larraine was ducking and dodging Tobin and Lenny. She never once told them, or even Office Susie, how she was planning on getting caught up. She never asked for a little more time. Meanwhile, Larraine's neighbor, biker Jerry Warren, confronted Tobin and Lenny immediately, balling up his eviction notice and threatening to wreck Lenny's face. Belligerent as it was, Jerry's confrontational response aligned with Tobin's blunt and brusque way. Property management was a profession dominated by men and by a gruff, masculine way of doing business. That put men like Jerry at an advantage.
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Not only did Jerry confront Tobin immediately after being served, but he later offered to pick up litter and repair some trailers if Tobin cleared his debt. Jerry had done some work for Tobin in the past, painting trailer hitches and winterizing pipes. Having proved himself a reliable hand, he had established a “working off the rent” option should money run thin. Larraine rang up social services and begged family members. Jerry went straight to the man who had initiated the eviction. And it worked: Tobin later dismissed his eviction. Larraine's plan could work only if a local nonprofit organization, her family, or her church came through.

Men often avoided eviction by laying concrete, patching roofs, or painting rooms for landlords. But women almost never approached their landlord with a similar offer. Some women—already taxed by child care, welfare requirements, or work obligations—could not spare the time. But many others simply did not conceive of working off the rent as a possibility. When women did approach their landlords with such an offer, it sometimes involved trading sex for rent.
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The power to dictate who could stay and who must go; the power to expel or forgive: it was an old power, and it was not without caprice.
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Tobin's decision to work with tenants could be arbitrary, his generosity unevenly dispensed. But at least you had a chance. In fact, one reason Larraine risked eviction and paid her gas bill was because other tenants had told her, speaking from experience, “Tobin's a nice guy. Just give him a little, and he'll work with you.”

This was why, when Tobin complied with Alderman Witkowski's demand to hire an outside management company, the trailer park began to worry. New management would institute a new system—a cleaner, more professional, and fairer way of running the park. In other words, things were about to get much worse.

One day, a man showed up outside Lenny's office and drilled a sign into the cinder blocks that announced:
PROFESSIONALLY MANAGED BY BIECK MANAGEMENT.
When an older resident saw the sign, she stepped into the office and began sobbing. “They evicted me from my last place,” she told Lenny. “They are so harsh.”

“Yeah, I hear they are ruthless,” Lenny said. “They put a whole lot of people on the streets. You know, if you can't work with people a little bit.”

“What about you, Lenny?” the woman asked after collecting herself.

“They're looking for a way to get rid of me, I can see that.” Lenny gestured toward the sign. “But it's not happening. You got to have somebody around here who knows the park,” he told the woman, and himself.

When everyone else had said no, Ruben had come through. Larraine's baby brother, who had found a way to lift himself into the middle class, who worked full-time for PPG Industries, had reluctantly agreed to pay Tobin. He brought the money to the trailer park himself. But Tobin refused to accept it, telling Larraine that he didn't want the money. Tobin walked away, leaving Larraine and Ruben standing, stunned, outside of the office. Ruben put his money back in his pocket and walked slowly with Larraine back to her trailer.
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A few hours later, Larraine answered a knock at her door and found two sheriff deputies standing on her small porch. Behind them, the Eagle Moving trucks were pulling into the trailer park. It was a tight pinch for the drivers, maneuvering through the narrow entrance, minding the unleashed dogs and children, and backing up to the designated spot; but Eagle had been in Tobin's park plenty of times. It was the last move of the day, and the crew was sore and eager to get home.
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The movers were hoping for a “junk in,” but Larraine asked that her things be taken to storage. Ruben loaded her television and computer in his car and then left to pick up his kids. The movers began filling boxes with Larraine's things: the white utensils in the kitchen, a Christmas gift for her grandson, a necklace Glen had given her. A deputy taped an orange sign to her door.

You have been evicted from this property by virtue of a Court Order served by the Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office

YOUR PRESENCE ON THIS PROPERTY WITHOUT THE EXPRESS PERMISSION OF THE LANDLORD WILL BE CONSIDERED TRESPASSING AND MAY RESULT IN YOUR ARREST (STATUTE 943.14)

Larraine asked for more time to gather some belongings. The deputy said no. Then she asked if she could retrieve some items from the truck. A mover said no, citing the company's insurance policy.

Larraine stood outside, silently looking on. The movers carried out her chair, her washing machine, her refrigerator, stove, dining table. Next came the boxes with who knows what inside: perhaps winter jackets or shoes or shampoo. The neighbors began to gather. Some grabbed beers and positioned lawn chairs as if watching a NASCAR race.

It didn't take long. Larraine was cleaned out in less than an hour. She watched the truck lurch away. Her things were headed to Eagle's storage warehouse, a dimly lit expanse with clear lightbulbs strung from a ceiling supported by large wood pillars. Inside, there were hundreds upon hundreds of piles, each representing an eviction or foreclosure. The piles were stacked to eye level and individually encircled in shrink-wrap like so many silken-wound insects on a spider's web. Up close, the contents were visible through the taut clear wrapping: scratched-up furniture, lamps, bathroom scales, and everywhere children's things—rocking horses, strollers, baby swings, bouncy seats. The Brittain brothers thought of the warehouse as a “giant stomach,” digesting the city. They charged $25 per pallet per month. The average evicted family's possessions took up four pallets, or 400 cubic feet.

Larraine would have to find a way to pay her storage bill. If she fell ninety days behind, Eagle would get rid of her pile to make room for a new one. This was the fate of roughly 70 percent of lots confiscated in evictions or foreclosures. Years before, the Brittain brothers had approached Goodwill but were rebuffed; there was simply no way Goodwill could handle that kind of volume. The brothers searched elsewhere. They reached out to metal scrappers. They found someone who would buy the clothing by the bale, turning it into rags. They partnered with people who would rummage through the piles, looking for things to sell. They organized public sales twice a month, each involving ten to forty lots. But most of the stuff ended up in the dump.
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