Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

In September 2008, Sherrena is driving to Milwaukee’s North Side to evict two tenants at a property just off of Wright Street. She is an inner-city entrepreneur who specializes in renting to poor minorities. For eight years, she was a fourth-grade schoolteacher, but four years after marrying her husband, Quentin, now her property manager, she went into real estate: “Sherrena shared something with other landlords: an unbending confidence she could make it on her own […] that she could strike out into nothing and through her own gumption and intelligence come back with a good living” (12). Within four years, she owned thirty-six units, a credit-repair service, and an investment business.

Despite pangs of guilt, Sherrena is evicting Lamar Richards, a legless man, who lives in the bottom half of one of the two duplexes at the property. She’s also evicting Patrice Hinkston and her three children, who live above Patrice’s mother, Doreen, and Patrice’s three siblings in the other duplex. Lamar says he is doing some work on the property to lower what he owes. Sherrena reminds him to deal with her, not her husband. Sherrena has just had another house shut down by the city because the subsequently-evicted tenants were illegally stealing electricity from We Energies.

Sherrena drives to another property to check on a new tenant, who is sitting outside with her baby and her mom. The tenant complains about the condition of the property while her mother says she’s called the Department of Neighborhood Services (DNS) to send out an inspector. Sherrena feels betrayed because she let the woman move in despite having three evictions in the past two years. She thinks, “There’s me having a heart again” (16). Sherrena returns that night with a five-day eviction notice—she’d allowed the tenant to move in with a partial rent payment which means she’s already behind on what she owes—because the mother called DNS.

The next tenant to move into the house is Arleen Belle, along with her two sons. 

Lamar lives in the duplex with his two teenage sons, and it is a hangout for neighborhood boys. They spend afternoons playing spades, smoking pot, and discussing the racial inequities of the police and justice systems. Lamar is in his early fifties and was in the Navy during Vietnam before being dishonorably discharged. While high on crack the previous winter, he crawled into an abandoned house and became trapped, losing his lower legs to frostbite.

After paying $550 a month in rent, Lamar is left with $78 from his welfare check. He accidently received two welfare checks in the same month and is now in the process of paying the extra money back by converting $150 of food stamps to $75 cash each month. Having quickly fallen behind on his rent, Lamar does work he feels is worth $250 by cleaning out a basement on the property, but Sherrena only credits him $50. He and his sons paint the interior of Patrice’s duplex after she moves out, but Sherrena says the work is of such poor quality she offers him no credit for it. Lamar is constantly hustling to make his rent but consistently comes up short.

The next month, Sherrena attends a meeting of the Milwaukee Real Estate Investors Networking Group (RING). Of the fifty people attending, all are white except her and her friend, Lora. In the past, being a landlord/property manager meant owning one or two properties, probably something inherited from a family member, and was a part-time occupation. Now, as over 56,000 well-paying manufacturing jobs disappeared in Milwaukee and the black poverty rate rose from 28% in 1980 to 42% in 1990, buying and managing rental property has become a big business.

Sherrena asks some questions, not because she doesn’t know the answers but to let the white property owners know she’ll do what it takes to collect rent in the black-dominated North Side if they’ll hire her to manage their properties. After the meeting, she and Lora discuss Lamar and his overvalued painting and cleaning efforts. Lora says, “He’s a player, that’s all he is. Time for him to go […] They just try to take, take, take, take, take” (30). This cheers Sherrena up.  

In contrast to the North Side, the College Mobile Home Park is on the South Side of Milwaukee, and its residents are poor whites. Lenny Lawson, who has lived there his whole life, is the manager, and “Office Susie” Dunn does clerical work. There are 131 units divided between the drug users on the north side of the trailer park; people working double shifts, who live on the south side of the park; residents with the best jobs in trailers behind the office; old folks and those on supplemental security income (SSI) scattered throughout; and the sex offenders, as much as possible, grouped near the druggies. Most of Lenny’s days consist of dealing with the residents about one crisis or another. He says, “Sometimes I’m a shrink […] Sometimes I’m the village asshole” (36).

Tobin Charney owns the trailer park. At seventy-one, he comes there every day except Sunday although he lives seventy miles away. His father was a landlord with 600 units, but Tobin only wants to own this property. He is neither friendly nor particularly fair, but he is willing to work with tenants when they fall behind on rent. He is in danger, however, of losing the trailer park due to the many police visits made there, as well as a variety of environmental hazards from faulty plumbing and generally poor upkeep. Soon, the Milwaukee Licenses Commission will decide to renew or revoke his license, based on these issues.

A month earlier, he drove two of his tenants, Larraine Jenkins, who’s in her mid-fifties, and the again-pregnant Pam Reinke, to eviction court. Each of them agreed to a plan to catch up with their rent. Larraine, however, has been on the news talking about how bad the trailer park is, so Tobin evicts her for still being behind on her rent. Office Susie drives Larraine to the bank to get money out, but while Tobin accepts it, she’s still $150 short, so he’s still going to evict her. After Tobin leaves, Office Susie delays the eviction to give her some more time, but Larraine has no idea where she will find the money she needs. 

Tobin has his license for the trailer park renewed by agreeing to conditions that include taking a landlord training class, implementing 24-hour security, hiring an outside management company to run the day-to-day operations, and selling the trailer park within a year. Part of the agreement also requires removing problem tenants, so he begins delivering 5- and 28-day eviction notices.

Pregnant Pam, her boyfriend Ned Kroll, and their four daughters receive a 5-day eviction notice because they are behind on rent. Tobin “gave” them their trailer—which is the case for all but twenty trailers in the park—so their rent is for the lot the trailer is on and makes them responsible for its upkeep. However, if they can’t pay the lot rent and are evicted—and because they won’t have the money to move their trailer somewhere else—Tobin will claim the trailer as abandoned property to “give” to a new set of tenants.

Pam had her first two daughters with a black drug dealer, and they are the only two black residents of the trailer park. She has been in and out of jail, been on and off drugs, and moved to Milwaukee from Green Bay with Ned for a new start. To receive her $673 monthly welfare check and $390 in food stamps, she works 30 hours a week at a commercial printing company. Ned has one daughter from a previous girlfriend and is an itinerant motorcycle mechanic who at best makes $50 day and is described as “the kind of man who took satisfaction in leaving the bathroom door open and scratching himself in public” (48).

Pam lost her job, however, when their car broke down and that, along with ongoing crack cocaine and heroin use, begins their slide toward eviction from the trailer park. Between the two of them, the four kids, the second child with Ned on the way, and their drug habits, they never become caught up enough to make financial progress in their lives.   

Scott Bunker, a forty-year-old heroin addict and resident at the park, agrees to let Pam and her family move in with him and Teddy, an older man he takes care of. When Tobin learns of this, he also gives Scott and Teddy an eviction notice for letting people other than the two of them stay at their trailer.