Summary: Part 1, Rent: Chapters 3–5

Chapter 3, “Hot Water,” begins by introducing Lenny Lawson. Lenny lived in College Mobile Home Park, a trailer park near an airport, and had become its manager about 12 years before. The park, on the racially divided city’s far South Side, housed mostly poor white people. Lenny worked in the office with Susie Dunn (called “Office Susie”), an administrative assistant. Tobin Charney, the park’s owner, lived in Illinois. He was sometimes lenient with late rent payments but did evict a few residents each month. One of those he threatened to evict was Larraine, a religious woman who was behind on rent after paying a delinquent utility bill in hopes of having her hot water turned back on.

Chapter 4, “A Beautiful Collection,” continues the story of Tobin Charney and his trailer park. The park was in danger of being shut down by the city due to numerous code violations. So Tobin went before the city’s common council and promised to do better. The council, recognizing that the park’s residents had few other housing options, told Tobin he could keep the park open if he evicted troublemakers. Tobin began evicting people. He didn’t have any trouble filling up empty trailers, because there were always people whose income was too low to have better options. As in many cities, Milwaukee’s low-cost rentals were in high demand. This competition disincentivized making improvements to units.

One of the eviction notices went to Pam and Ned, who both had a history of drug abuse and criminal convictions. Pam, pregnant and desperate, asked neighbors at the park, Scott and Teddy, if she and Ned could move in with them for a while. Scott and Teddy agreed, but when Tobin learned of the arrangement, he evicted Scott and Teddy as well.

Chapter 5, “Thirteenth Street,” focuses again on Arleen. Her place on Thirteenth Street wasn’t perfect, but Arleen tried to make it comfortable. Jori and Jafaris settled in and made neighborhood friends. A young woman named Trisha moved into the upper apartment, and she and Arleen became friends. But there were problems, too. Jafaris needed consistent treatment for his asthma and was beginning to struggle in school. Arleen hoped to someday qualify for government housing assistance, but with over 3,500 families on a waiting list, she was unlikely to ever get it. And due to having moved so many times, Arleen missed a notice from her case worker at the welfare office, and her monthly payment was reduced.

Analysis: Part 1, Rent: Chapters 3–5

Moving between Sherrena’s rental units on the North Side and Tobin’s trailer park on the far South Side shows how racially divided Milwaukee is, an important undercurrent running throughout the book.

Though not all the challenges faced by white and Black people living in poverty are the same, these early chapters show they do have many things in common. The most obvious is that landlords routinely evict them, and there are virtually no negative consequences for landlords. And landlords, regardless of whether they are Black, like Sherrena, or white, like Tobin, engage with their renters in similar ways. Like Sherrena, Tobin evicts people each month and quickly fills his units again. Like Sherrena, he seems capricious at times—evicting people simply because they cross him, as Scott and Teddy did when they opened their home to Pam and Ned. Like Sherrena, Tobin routinely rents units that have serious issues—they are broken, dirty, and often dangerous. But since the landlords have the power to evict tenants for any number of reasons and there are always new tenants to be had, there is little pressure on them to improve matters for their tenants. Even when the city council gets involved, it is clear they are reluctant to shut down the trailer park, because the people living there cannot easily go elsewhere.

Government is similarly pathetic regarding housing assistance—a program meant to help people like Arleen and other renters in the book. Thousands of people are on the waiting list; they qualify for the assistance but still cannot access it. So the status quo is perpetuated by those who actively hold it up and by those who simply throw their hands up.

Another way the text reveals the nature of poverty is to show how the poor become trapped in a cycle of getting behind, then trying to catch up, managing each month like a balancing act in which one prioritizes only the most pressing unpaid bills. Larraine is behind on her utility payments, so she has no hot water. She pays some toward her late utility bill but then doesn’t have enough to pay rent. The result of poverty is an even more entrenched poverty.