Evicted (5 page)

Option one was a non-option. Tobin was a landlord to make a living, and if he was too lenient he could lose his business. But Tobin also did not evict most tenants who owed him. Pushing tenants out and pulling new ones in cost money too. In an average month, forty of Tobin's tenants were behind—nearly one-third of the trailer park. The average tenant owed $340.
4
But Tobin only evicted a handful of tenants each month. A landlord could be too soft or too hard; the money was in the middle, with the third route, and his tenants were grateful for it, though often not at first.

Jerry Warren wasn't. Jerry used to ride with the Outlaws, a biker gang, and was covered in tattoos, several of which he had acquired in prison. Eviction notice in hand, Tobin had whapped the side of Jerry's trailer, an aqua-blue 700-footer Jerry had painted himself. Jerry balled up the notice and threw it in Tobin's face, yelling, “Tobin, I don't give a shit about this fucking eviction! And Lenny, I don't care how old you are. I'll still take to whooping your ass something good!” Lenny and Jerry exchanged words, but Tobin was unfazed. He had begun a conversation, and a few days later, after he had cooled off, Jerry would pick it up.
5
He offered to clean up the trailer park and attend to some maintenance concerns if Tobin canceled the eviction. Tobin accepted the offer.

He took a different tack with Larraine Jenkins. A month before the Licenses Committee had rejected Tobin's renewal application, he had given her a ride to eviction court in the Cadillac. Larraine received SSI for learning impairments attributed to a childhood fall out of an attic window. Her monthly check was $714. Her monthly rent was $550, utilities not included. Larraine had been late with the rent several times before Tobin finally took her to court. “It's just hard to give up that rent,” Larraine admitted. “You've got to wonder if the street people don't have the right idea. Just live on the street. Don't have to pay rent to nobody.” She sat in the passenger's seat, while another tenant named Pam Reinke, a pregnant woman with straight-cut bangs and freckles, sat in the back. In court, Tobin offered them both stipulation agreements, a civil court's version of a plea bargain. If they stuck to a tight payment schedule, Tobin would dismiss the eviction. If they deviated, Tobin could obtain a judgment of eviction and activate the sheriff's eviction squad (with something called a “writ of restitution”) without having to take Larraine or Pam to court again.

Throughout his fight with Witkowski, Tobin had worried that tenants would hold their money until the fate of the trailer park was settled. But most tenants went right on paying. Larraine wasn't one of them. Already behind, she had withheld June's rent because she didn't know if the park would be shut down. If she had to move anyway, she figured, she might as well pocket the $550. Larraine was pushing her luck. Besides owing back rent, she had been one of the critics who had appeared on the nightly news, where she admitted to seeing prostitutes and drug dealers in the park. (Phyllis Gladstone, the most vocal supporter of Witkowski, had put Larraine up to it.)
6
When Tobin found out about everything, he recalled that Larraine hadn't fulfilled her stipulation agreement. That meant he could ask the sheriff's eviction squad to remove her. So he did.

Soon, a letter from the Milwaukee Sheriff's Office arrived in Larraine's mailbox. Printed on a bright-yellow sheet of paper was the following message:

You are hereby notified that the Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office has a court order (Writ of Restitution/Assistance) requiring your immediate removal from the premises.
Failure to vacate immediately will be cause for the Sheriff to remove your belongings from the premises.

If an eviction is necessary, risk of damages or loss of property shall be borne by you, the defendant, after delivery by the Sheriff to the place of safekeeping. Movers will not take food left in your refrigerator or freezer.
REMOVE FOOD ITEMS
.

The words had terrified Larraine. It showed. Her emotions projected onto her face like a movie screen. When she was happy, she beamed, flashing a gap-toothed smile; and when she was depressed, her whole face drooped as if being pulled down by a hundred tiny lead sinkers. At fifty-four, Larraine lived alone in a clean, white trailer, though she prayed to one day be reunited with her two adult daughters and her grandson, who, along with God, occupied the center of her universe. She was tub-bellied, with a broad face and freckled white skin. Years ago, she had been gorgeous and liked to dress in a way that made boys lean out of their car windows. Larraine still cared about her appearance and would leave her eyeglasses at home because she thought they made her look “like a dead fish.” When she wanted to look nice, she put on jewelry she had acquired as a young woman, using safety pins to expand the necklace chains so they fit.

Smelling of sweat and vinegar, her brown hair in disarray, Larraine stepped into the office, wringing the yellow paper like a dishrag. After a brisk exchange, Tobin led Larraine outside and called after Susie.

“Susie? Susie!” Tobin yelled.

“What, Tobin?”

“Take her to the bank, will ya? She's gonna get some money for the rent.”

“Come on,” Susie said, stepping briskly to her car.

When Susie returned with Larraine, Tobin was in the office, shuffling through papers. “How much?” he asked Susie.

“I have four hundred,” Larraine answered.

“I'm not calling off the eviction,” Tobin said, still looking at Susie. Larraine owed another $150 for that month.

Larraine just stood there.

Tobin turned to Larraine. “When can you get me the other one fifty?”

“Tonight, okay—”

Tobin cut her off: “Okay. You give it to Susie or Lenny.”

Larraine didn't have it. She had used $150 of her rent money to pay a defaulted utility bill with the hope of having her gas turned back on. She wanted to take a hot shower, scrub away the smell. She wanted to feel clean, maybe even something closer to pretty, like she used to feel when she danced on tables for men, back when her daughters were babies. She wanted the water to soothe the pain of her fibromyalgia, which she likened to “a million knives” going up her back. She had prescriptions for Lyrica and Celebrex but didn't always have enough for the copay. Hot water would help. But $150 wasn't enough. We Energies accepted her money but didn't turn on her gas. Larraine felt stupid for paying.

Susie made out a receipt on a piece of scrap paper and stapled it to Larraine's eviction notice. “You should go ask your sister for the rest,” she suggested, picking up the fax machine's phone and dialing a number she knew by heart. “Yes. Hello? I need to stop an eviction at College Mobile Home Park,” Susie said to the Sheriff's Office. “For Larraine Jenkins in W46. She took care of her rent.” Office Susie had canceled the sheriff deputies, but Tobin could reactivate them if Larraine didn't come up with the rest of what she owed.

Larraine sulked back to her trailer. It was so hot inside that she thought lukewarm water might run in the shower. She didn't turn on the fan; fans made her dizzy. She didn't open a window. She just sat on the couch. She called a few local agencies. After several unsuccessful tries, she said blankly to the floor, “I can't think of anything else.” Larraine lay down on the couch, tried to ignore the heat, and slept.

The day the Common Council was to decide the fate of the trailer park, Tobin Charney, dressed in a polo shirt, tan slacks, and brown loafers, sat in the middle of a front-row bench next to his wife and lawyer. Large pink marble columns stretched up toward a beamed ceiling with an intricate maroon-and-yellow pattern. A large oak desk rested in the front of the room, facing fifteen smaller oak desks assigned to each alderperson and spaced several feet apart. The night before, the lawyer had submitted an addendum to the council. It came in too late for most alders to read, so the lawyer stood and cleared his throat. The addendum, he informed the room, included ten steps Tobin would take in the immediate and near future. He would enroll in a daylong landlord training class offered by the city, hire a twenty-four-hour security service and an independent management company, evict nuisance tenants, and address the property-code violations. He would not retaliate against tenants who spoke out against him. And he would sell the trailer park within a year.

“The people in this park are vulnerable: elderly, disabled, children,” the lawyer concluded, noting that Tobin had “worked diligently” with Alderman Witkowski to “draw up the terms of the agreement.”

The Common Council was not happy with this midnight deal, and they argued with one another as sunlight beamed through the chamber's stained-glass windows. One alderman called it a “gentleman's agreement.” Another asked if all citizens, when called to account, could simply produce a ten-point plan. Finally, Alderman Witkowski rose to speak.

“Mr. Charney has allowed a good mobile home park to move to something like this,” he began. “I have four mobile home parks in my district, and this is the only one with these types of problems.” He looked over his glasses at the lawyer. “They aren't
all
elderly, disabled, and children, sir. But”—he turned back to his colleagues—“there are people with limited means and limited abilities. They would be forced to move out.” Witkowski was no friend of Tobin's, but he was satisfied with the terms of the addendum.

The debate rose up again, energetic and sharp. Tobin remained seated in the back, holding his wife's hand and looking annoyed.

The president called for a vote.

After the hearing, Tobin drove to the trailer park. He did not call everyone together to announce the resolution. He did not slide into a chair in the office and let out a sigh. He began evictions. The council had agreed to let Tobin keep his license only if he took drastic steps to improve the park, including forcing the troublemakers out.

When city or state officials pressured landlords—by ordering them to hire an outside security firm or by having a building inspector scrutinize their property—landlords often passed the pressure on to their tenants.
1
There was also the matter of reestablishing control. The most effective way to assert, or reassert, ownership of land was to force people from it.
2

“Where did my twenty-eight-day notices go?” Lenny asked. He was in the office searching through piles of papers. With a twenty-eight-day “no cause” termination notice, landlords did not need to provide a reason for the eviction. It was an ideal way to remove nuisance tenants who were current on their rent. Turning to Tobin, he said, “You got a lot of twenty-eight-day notices to fill out.”

“They owe me back rent,” Tobin replied. “Give them a five-day.”

“They,” in this case, meant Pam and her family. After driving Pam to eviction court, Tobin had asked her to talk to the newspeople. She was thirty years old and seven months pregnant, with a midwestern twang and a face cut from a high school yearbook photo. She made for a sympathetic case. But now Tobin was cleaning house.

Tobin looked up. “Lenny, I hope the money isn't coming in slow because of this,” he said.

“It's not, surprisingly,” Lenny replied. “I just filled out my spreadsheets, and we're looking good.”

Office Susie added, “I had a beautiful collection.”

Pam tried changing Tobin's mind by signing over the $1,200 check she had just received as part of Obama's economic stimulus act. She thought it would be enough, mainly because she thought she owed $1,800. But Tobin said she owed something more like $3,000, and Office Susie told him Pam smoked crack. Tobin accepted Pam's stimulus check but moved forward with the eviction anyway. Pam's family had lived in the trailer park for two years.

Pam and her boyfriend, Ned Kroll, ended up in one of Tobin's trailers because he gave it to them. Pam and Ned had been considering moving to Milwaukee from Green Bay to be closer to Pam's ailing father when they spotted an ad Tobin had taken out in the local paper. They drove down to have a look.

When Pam and Ned arrived at College Mobile Home Park, Tobin and Lenny offered them the “Handyman Special,” a free mobile home. Under this arrangement, tenants owned the trailers, and Tobin owned the ground underneath them. He charged the owners “lot rent,” which was equivalent to what his renters paid. But unlike the renters, families who owned their trailers were responsible for upkeep. In theory, a family could at any time move their trailer elsewhere. But the owners knew that in practice this was impossible. Towing expenses exceed $1,500 and setting up the trailer somewhere else could cost double that. When owners were evicted and inevitably left their trailer behind, Tobin would reclaim it as “abandoned property” and give it to someone else.

At the time that Pam was facing eviction, all but twenty trailers in the park were owner-occupied. The only benefit to owning your trailer was psychological. “I moved here so I can own a home, even if it's on wheels,” one of Pam's neighbors liked to say.
3

Tobin's mobile-home giveaways sped things up—he could fill recently vacated trailers, sometimes even junk trailers, in weeks if not days—but hard-up families found the trailer park on their own too.

In Milwaukee and cities across the country, as affordable rental stock has been allowed to deteriorate and eventually disappear, low-income families have rushed to occupy cheap units. Nationwide, vacancy rates for low-cost units have fallen to single digits.
4
Lenny's office phone rang daily with people inquiring about availability. The phone rang before the newspeople came, and it rang after they left. The month the story aired, the trailer park had zero vacancies. “The park is filled up,” Lenny said with a chuckle. “And we still got people calling.” The rent rolls that Lenny kept for Tobin showed that in an average month only five trailers sat vacant, which would put Tobin's vacancy rate below 4 percent.
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The high demand for the cheapest housing told landlords that for every family in a unit there were scores behind them ready to take their place. In such an environment, the incentive to lower the rent, forgive a late payment, or spruce up your property was extremely low.

“Figures,” Ned had mumbled past a dangling cigarette when he found out Pam was pregnant with another daughter. He had made a son once, when he was sixteen, with a Mexican girl he'd met at a ZZ Top concert. But the girl's family blotted him out, and Ned hardly thought about that boy anymore unless “La Grange” came on the radio. “After that, maybe I got punished,” he once mused. “No more boys.” The new one would make five daughters if you counted Pam's two black girls, which Ned sometimes did.

Pam and Ned had met in Green Bay, after Pam's father asked Ned to tune up his Harley. Ned was ten years older than Pam, with grease under his fingernails, brown stubble, and long hair, balding in the front. He was the kind of man who took satisfaction in leaving the bathroom door open and scratching himself in public.

Pam already had two daughters: Bliss, born when Pam was twenty-three, and Sandra two years after that. Their father, a black man, was a drug dealer whom Pam had met when she was nineteen. Pam later learned that she was one of several girlfriends.

“Tell about the time that Dad hit you with a bottle and blood was coming out of your head,” Sandra once asked her mother as they drove to a food pantry. She was six when she said this.

Pam forced a sad smile. “You weren't old enough to remember that.”

“Yes, I was,” replied Sandra. Sandra was the one who would squash a cockroach with a loose shoe while the other girls shuddered and clung to one another. She and Bliss were the only black children in the trailer park. Once, one of their neighbors hung a Nazi flag in his front window. Lenny didn't permit that, but he was okay with the Confederate flag as long as it was displayed underneath Old Glory.

“No, you were just a baby. Now, Bliss, she was. She got so used to it. She always saw blood just pour out of me.”

Pam found a way to leave him. She began working as a certified nursing assistant, emptying bedpans, mopping up puke, and rotating the invalids to prevent bedsores. She learned how to cook pots of spaghetti and macaroni salad. Her mother had died in a car accident when Pam was in high school and had never got around to teaching her. Her father hadn't either; he spent a lot of time in prison on drug and drunk-driving charges. Pam's brother was doing better too. He was taking methadone and said he didn't miss heroin.

It was a time of promise and rebirth, a time of putting one foot steadily in front of the other. Then the ground shifted beneath. One day Pam answered the phone. A voice was saying that her brother was dead. Pam asked how. The voice said overdose. He was twenty-nine. Pam screamed into the phone. Then she hung up and dialed another number to ask for something to keep her from drowning.

The words to describe the drug—“crack,” “rock”—gave off the impression that it was a gnarled, craggy thing. But when you held it in your hand, it could be smooth and elegant. It could look like a piece of Chiclets gum, the kind that slides into a child's cupped hand out of the quarter-turn machine. All those years with the drug dealer, Pam had stayed away from it. She saw how it turned people, saw what they would do for it. But she also saw the way it helped people forget. “There was not a day that went by that I wasn't fucked up on something,” Pam remembered. “And sometimes I'd be like, ‘Wow. I haven't even cried for him yet.' But I didn't. Before I would, I'd go and get high.”

That's when she met Ned.

That first year, crack was the force that held them together. They lived for it and by it, raising the girls along the way. Soon they began selling it. A year after meeting, they were caught and convicted. Ned, who had a previous drug charge, did prison time. It was Pam's first felony. She was sentenced to four years' probation and made to sit for ten months in a jail cell, where, finally, she cried.

When Pam got out, she tried to stay sober. She moved in with the straightest friend she knew in Green Bay, but while Pam was in jail, the friend had developed a habit. “Everybody, everybody I know in fucking Green Bay is fucking on dope,” Pam vented. She asked her father to wire her $500 so she could move and, to her surprise, he did. But Green Bay was a small town, and Pam soon crossed paths with one of her former dealers. “He got me hooked right back on.”

Pam and Ned reconnected after he was released, and Pam soon discovered she was pregnant. Ned demanded a paternity test, which confirmed the baby was his. They settled on a name: Kristen. Soon, Ned's daughter from another woman came to live with them. Laura had a small nose and freckles, and was one year older than Bliss. A few months after Laura moved in, Ned left her, Pam, and the other girls with a woman they had just met in the drug scene. Pam and the girls spent the night at the woman's house, then the next night, and the night after that. Pam eventually walked Laura to her mother's house and knocked on the door. She remembered standing at the door and telling Laura's mother: “I'm about to have this baby. I'm homeless right now. Your old man left me. I have no money, no food, no nothing for your kid. I'm scared….Can you please take your daughter?”
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Laura's mother stayed on the phone, gave them a bag of canned food, and shut the door. Pam and the girls stayed at the woman's house. Ned came back a month later.

When Tobin told Pam and Ned he was keeping their rebate check and still evicting them, he brought along a security detail. But nobody caused a scene, even though Tobin only gave them twenty-four hours to leave before he called the sheriff. Ned might have raised hell if he didn't have an outstanding warrant for his arrest, stemming from another drug charge. Pam and Ned blamed each other for the eviction.

“You cracked it up,” Ned snapped at Pam.

“
You
cracked it up,” Pam shot back. “Talking about me. I handed you all the money….You got us evicted.”

“Move, bitch.”

“It's
you
, Ned.”

“You can move.”

“I can't. It's you.” Pam stopped. “I don't know. Is it really me? Is it me who has the problem? I don't know. Maybe it is. Am I the one that fucked up?”

They sold their only possessions worth anything—the television and the computer, Pam's Christmas gift. They would need the extra cash. Each month Pam worked thirty hours a week for her welfare check of $673 and received $390 in food stamps. On a good day Ned brought in $50 cash for customizing and repairing motorcycles. Pam's money was Pam's money and Ned's was Ned's. They kept separate bank accounts and split the bills down the middle.

After jail, Pam had had a difficult time finding work with her recent drug conviction. She finally was hired by Quad Graphics, a commercial printing plant. Quad had a reputation for hiring people with records and without high school diplomas, provided they were willing to work the third shift. Pam was. She ran the warm, humming machines from seven p.m. to seven a.m.

Quad Graphics was in Sussex, a forty-minute drive from the trailer park. Pam relished the commute. It was her time, time away from Ned and the kids.