Evicted: Chapter 20 Summary & Analysis

After being evicted, Crystal moves into the Lodge. She didn’t attend her eviction hearing, mistakenly believing this would help her avoid a mark on her record. Crystal has mixed feelings about the Lodge, but it is a perfect place to find a new friend who will serve as a mother figure. She finds such a person in Vanetta Evans, a 20-year-old mother of three. Vanetta has a mature, “put-together” manner, and is skilled at disciplining her children. She and Crystal bond over shared cigarettes, then begin sharing snacks and meals. They start referring to themselves as sisters and decide to look for a home together. 

Vanetta was awaiting a sentence hearing. After being fired and evicted, she and a friend robbed two women and were arrested. She is now facing a fine of up to $100,000 or forty years imprisonment. Looking for an apartment, Crystal and Vanetta are desperate to avoid the North Side. They try a company called Affordable Rentals, which has a range of units at reasonable rates. They ignore a sign in the office stating that Affordable Renters refuses applicants who have evictions, drug or crime convictions, non-verifiable or insufficient income, or a bad reference from a previous landlord.

Vanetta is determined to find somewhere for under $550 because she doesn’t trust that Crystal will be able to reliably contribute to anything higher. Crystal spends money on clothes, fast food, the casino, and hefty donations to her church. Crystal attends church many days of the week; it is the center of her existence. Yet she keeps the fact that she is staying at the Lodge secret from almost everyone there, wanting to be seen as an equal rather than “an object of pity.”

After another disappointing episode in their housing search, Vanetta begins to cry, while Crystal comforts her by singing. Vanetta comments that they were probably turned away because they were black. Most people assume that segregation exists in Milwaukee because of the racism of individuals, but the city was actually designed this way. Tenement buildings exist because they bring in huge profits to landlords. Slums have been around for many centuries, and the problem of poor people being unable to afford housing also has a long history. Racial oppression and segregation in the United States has drastically compounded this problem. 

The Great Migration of the early 20th century—when black people moved North en masse from the South—is how many black people ended up in Milwaukee. These individuals were crowded into urban ghettos where they lived in often dismally substandard housing. While the New Deal helped white people become homeowners, black people were denied this support. This created a “semipermanent black rental class” who remained desperately vulnerable to exploitation by landlords. Even after housing discrimination along racial lines was outlawed, landlords used covert means (such as the list of rules at Affordable Rentals) to continue discriminating without consequences.

After lashing out at an employee at the Lodge, Crystal is kicked out and is forced to turn to Minister Barber from church for help. He finds an elderly couple who allow her to stay one night before forcing her to leave, likely because she didn’t give them any money. She doesn’t have any after recently lending a cousin $400, which she’d won at the casino. Crystal often cannot help but extend charity to those in need. She once bought a meal for a boy at McDonalds who had been looking for scraps at the tables, and said she wished she had somewhere to live so she could bring him back with her. Now, she dials all the numbers she has in order to ask for help. No one answers.