Summary: Part 2, Out: Chapters 9–11

In Chapter 9, “Order Some Carryout,” Larraine tried everything she could think of to avoid eviction. She called government agencies and nonprofits, asking for help with rent. No luck. She asked her pastor for help, but he felt some of her problems were of her own making and refused. The movers from Eagle Moving and Storage arrived and moved her possessions out of the trailer. She moved into her brother’s trailer.

Several people were involved when an eviction took place. Some were crews from companies like Eagle Moving and Storage, which owed about 40% of its business to evictions. Others were the sheriff’s deputies who knocked on doors and told people the eviction was happening. Landlords had to pay for these services. Most evictions cost around $600 in moving fees and sheriff’s fees. Not all evictions were rentals, though. Some people lost their homes to foreclosure by the bank after taking out subprime loans with ever-increasing payments.

In Chapter 10, “Hypes for Hire,” Lamar fixed the botched paint job in one of Sherrena’s units, hoping she wouldn’t evict him. This situation was common among landlords, who would rely on tenants for labor or would hire unemployed men who would work for little pay. Many of Sherrena and Quentin’s workers are “hypes”—crack users who will work for “peanuts” doing repairs and cleanup on the rental units. Lamar has a new upstairs neighbor, Kamala, and he gives her a hot plate so she can cook for herself and her three daughters. Her own apartment only has a microwave.

In Chapter 11, “The ’Hood Is Good,” a social worker called Sherrena and tried to get her to fix some of the problems at the Hinkstons’ apartment. During the conversation, the social worker revealed that Doreen was withholding rent money so she could have enough to move into a different place. Sherrena was angry and immediately set a court date for Doreen’s eviction. Sherrena knew that having an eviction on a tenant’s record made it much harder for them to find a new place. Eventually, though, Doreen agreed to pay a little more to have Sherrena drop the eviction.

Sherrena and Quentin always drove to their rentals to collect rent at the first of the month, because many tenants didn’t have bank accounts; they paid in cash. They had a new tenant—one with a housing voucher from the government, which was rare. Housing vouchers allowed tenants to pay just 30% of their income, with the government paying the rest. So Sherrena can charge an above-market rent and have that rent nearly guaranteed. And she was buying about one new house a month, due to low prices stemming from the housing market crash. “[If] you have money right now,” she observed, “you can profit from other people’s failures.”

Analysis: Part 2, Out: Chapters 9–11

These chapters flesh out just how big the business of evictions is by expanding the pool of people making a profit from it. First, there are moving companies, like Eagle Moving and Storage, for whom evictions are a huge part of their business. Not only do they move evicted people’s belongings but they can also store them, for a price. Then there are government departments and agencies. In Chapter 9, the sheriff’s department gets a fee for each eviction. Other fines, fees, and taxes come up in other parts of the book.

Banks, who offer subprime loans to borrowers so they can buy homes, only to foreclose on those homeowners when they can’t make the payments, also profit. These risky loans often have high, variable interest rates that change the number of payments from month to month. It’s a win-win for the bank. When borrowers pay, they pay high interest. When they can’t pay, the bank forecloses, taking possession of the property and reselling it.

And of course, the big winners are the landlords who are willing to exploit the poor for profit. Landlords like Sherrena buy the properties at low prices and turn them into rentals. They have a pool of workers made up of crack users who will work for very low pay and tenants trying to make up for missing rent by doing odd jobs on the properties. Again, the landlords’ profit depends on people who have so few options in life that they must accept low pay and/or unsafe housing. And it depends on working the system: knowing just how much you can overcharge in rent when the tenant is using a government housing voucher without raising the government’s suspicions; knowing how to leverage the threat of eviction to keep tenants in line.

When unaffordable, substandard housing is a money maker for so many people, there is pressure to keep people in it.