Evicted

After being evicted, Pam and her family stay in a motel for $50 a night. Ned is fired because of the two days of work he missed while the family were being evicted. Losing a job can definitely lead to evictions, but evictions can also cause people to lose their jobs through the stressful and time-consuming nature of being forced to move. A friend offers to look after the three oldest girls for a while; Ned and Pam hold onto two-year-old Kristen, and the three of them stay on the couch of a friend of Ned’s. Meanwhile, Ned manages to get some work in a mechanic’s shop.

After a month with Ned’s friend, Pam and Ned realize they need to find somewhere else. Pam is due to give birth in nine days. They call about an apartment but are turned away because the landlord doesn’t want any kids in the building. The fact that Ned and Pam have children is a major factor in their ongoing homelessness. Children cause difficulties for landlords, and landlords have thus long sought to avoid tenants with children. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 did not consider families with children a protected class and thus did not forbid discrimination against them.

In 1980, the Department of Housing and Urban Development found that only one in four rental units were available to families with children without extra charges or restrictions. In 1988 Congress banned housing discrimination against children, but that has had little effect on the way things work in reality. Today, families with children are turned away from 7 out of 10 rental units they approach. Like Ned and Pam, Arleen is also struggling to find a landlord that will take her and her boys. She has tried lying about her circumstances, but thus far it hasn’t helped.

Eventually, Arleen has a stroke of luck in a building that seems to have been a former mental institution. It’s creepy, but clean. She is shown around by a black man named Ali who lectures Arleen about the importance of black women having committed relationships, rather than being “Ms. Independent” and neglecting family. The one-bedroom apartment costs $500. Arleen nervously asks if pets are allowed, and Ali replies that the official rule is no pets, but that he is partial to cats and thus could make an exception. Jori is so happy he begins to cry.

Arleen decides to check if her cousin J.P.’s landlord has any vacant units. It will also be a chance to check on her son Boosie, who is staying at J.P.’s. Arleen’s three oldest children were taken away from her twice and raised in foster care. Boosie never wanted to come back, and when he was 17 he dropped out of school and started selling crack. Now, Boosie greets Jafaris affectionately and nods at his mother. She phones J.P.’s landlord and learns that there is a vacant unit downstairs. She is unsure, worried about the concentration of crime and drugs in the area.

After spending all day calling landlords, Pam reluctantly decides to start searching in the predominantly-Hispanic South Side. Units are cheaper there, but Pam would rather pay exorbitant rent than live in a majority nonwhite neighborhood. Ned comments that he doesn’t mind living among Mexicans as long as he doesn’t have to live with “niggers.” Pam gets uncomfortable when Ned says this kind of thing around her black daughters, but at the same time she also agrees with him. She is also desperate to remain in a white area. Yet after she and Ned have a promising conversation with a landlord in a Hispanic neighborhood, they agree living there could work. 

Ned’s friend kicks Pam and Ned out, and almost immediately afterward Pam gives birth to a baby girl. Shortly after they move into the new house in the Hispanic neighborhood, but after only three days Ned gets into a drunken fight with their upstairs neighbor and they are kicked out. Ned then finds a two-bedroom apartment in a white working-class area and pretends to be a single father, erasing the existence of Pam and her two black girls. He is approved.

Sandra and Bliss are told to pretend they don’t live at the house if asked. Ned abuses the girls, taunting them with racist insults. Pam prays for forgiveness. She is certain that she can’t leave Ned yet still sometimes daydreams about taking the girls away, wondering if it would be better for them to be homeless than stay with him.

Arleen continues to search for a place. She and the boys briefly return to their old apartment and pick up some things they’d left. Jafaris sees Little there and picks him up, but Arleen tells him to put the cat back down. She often scolds her boys for becoming too attached to anything or desiring things that are beyond their means. Her strictness is a form of protection that also harms them. They go and look at one more apartment and while there Jafaris uses the bathroom, discovering too late that the toilet doesn’t flush. The landlord yells at Arleen for having rude children.