Summary: Part 2, Out, Chapter 15–Part 3, After, Chapter 17

In Chapter 15, “A Nuisance,” Arleen was still looking for a rental and living with Crystal. Crystal told her she thought the woman upstairs, Trisha, was being abused by her boyfriend, Chris. Arleen had too many of her own problems to care. But later, when Crystal heard more sounds of violence, she made several calls to 911. The police came and took Chris away.

The 911 calls, on top of other police visits to the house, meant a fine for Sherrena. The city had laws in place that punished landlords for having properties considered a nuisance, and 911 calls for domestic violence were a common way to be designated a nuisance. And they were far more common in Black neighborhoods than in white ones; a higher percentage of the homes in Black neighborhoods that met the criteria to be a nuisance property were designated as such. Landlords typically responded to nuisance citations from the city by evicting the tenants. Sherrena decided to make Arleen move out.

In Chapter 16, “Ashes on Snow,” Sherrena made a lot of money in rent because it was tax refund time, and many tenants used the tax refund to pay back rent. Flush with cash, Sherrena and Quentin went to the casino. Across town, Lamar, his sons, and the neighborhood boys also played cards. Then a fire broke out in the unit upstairs from Lamar, where Kamala and Devon lived with three little girls. By the time Sherrena and Quentin got to the scene, the house was consumed in flames, the tenants were scattered around outside, and Kamala’s youngest was dead. Sherrena looked forward to the insurance payout.

In Chapter 17, “This Is America,” Arleen continued to look for a new place, lying about her income and the number of her children as she made her case to various landlords. She believes she has been successful after talking to a woman named Carol. Arleen put her belongings in a storage unit, planning to stay in a shelter until her new lease began. Then she learned that Carol had rented the unit to someone else without telling her. Arleen was forced to leave Crystal’s with no prospect of a new apartment. Arleen and Crystal didn’t part on good terms, because Crystal became enraged when Arleen tried to take an oven part with her. Some of Crystal’s rage was a result of mental disorders stemming from childhood trauma.

Analysis: Part 2, Out, Chapter 15–Part 3, After, Chapter 17

These chapters develop the theme of poverty and inequality in two main ways. First, the details of the narrative show how poverty and housing instability affect different demographics. Arleen and Crystal’s <Prod: link Crystal to Crystal Mayberry char> storyline shows that women with an abusive husband or boyfriend are often stuck in the abusive situation because they have no other way to have housing so they don’t report their abusers to law enforcement. On top of this, neighbors may not want to report the domestic abuse situation because if they do, the property might become a “nuisance” and their landlord might decide to evict them. Desmond does make a point of noting that rentals in Black neighborhoods are designated “nuisance” properties at a higher rate than those in white neighborhoods. This shows that the authorities that enforce the nuisance fines have a bias against Black neighborhoods.

Women with children also have a more tenuous hold on housing and suffer evictions and poverty at higher rates than women without children, as Arleen’s continued search for a rental reveals. Arleen feels she needs to lie about the number of children she has to get housing. But as we have learned already, when there are more people living in a unit than were agreed to when the lease began, the tenant is in violation of the lease and is more easily evicted. Arleen ignores this concern because, like the other tenants in the book, she is only trying to solve the most urgent problem. But this short-term focus often means trouble in the long term, a cycle that plays out over and over in the book.

Second, Desmond develops this theme through the structure of the text. He often contrasts the lives of landlords with those of their tenants to show that entrenched poverty is a result of the business model of many landlords, which keeps tenants in poverty because the poor are easily exploited. In Chapter 15, he draws parallels between Sherrena playing cards at the casino—and losing more money than many of her tenants must spend on food each month—and the card game at Lamar’s, which is interrupted by a deadly fire. Sherrena’s focus on the insurance money is an egregious example of the lack of concern landlords have for their tenants.