Evicted

Patrice’s mother Doreen has four children and three grandchildren. After Patrice is evicted, she moves back in with Doreen and her siblings. Doreen’s apartment is so crammed that no one can sleep well, but the family love playing pranks on each other. After Patrice is evicted, Sherenna learns that she has been pirating electricity and insists that Patrice pay while she is living with Doreen. The family’s apartment is infested with cockroaches, which have been there since they moved in.  

Before moving to their current place, the Hinkstons lived in the same five-bedroom house for seven years. The rent was $800 a month. Neither Patrice nor Doreen finished high school, and Patrice’s sister Natasha was working 12-hour shifts by the age of 16. Doreen still suffers from an untreated broken hip she got in the eighth grade. The Hinkstons were tight with the community in their old neighborhood. The neighbors would socialize with each other and help one another out in times of need. 

During Hurricane Katrina, Doreen and her neighbor were moved by the disaster and traveled to Louisiana to volunteer their help. The trip caused Doreen to fall behind on rent, but with the help of an understanding landlord she recovered. Years passed; then, in 2008, two boys shot each other on the Hinkstons’ street. When the police arrived, they tore through Doreen’s apartment looking for guns and drugs. When Patrice got impatient with the officers, they called Child Protection Services, who called the Department of Neighborhood Services. Under orders from the DNS, the landlord evicted the Hinkstons with a five-day notice. 

Having been served a notice, the Hinkstons rushed into the unit owned by Sherenna even though it was small and more expensive than their old place. It is common for tenants to accept substandard housing like this in the chaotic period following eviction. Unlike in their previous community, the Hinkstons struggled to befriend their new neighbors. The only person they got to know was Lamar.

In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs argues that inner cities are kept safe by “an intricate, almost unconscious network of voluntary controls and standards among the people themselves.” In order for a neighborhood to be safe, there need to be people who are around to take care of the community. This has been backed up by research, which shows that neighborhoods with high rates of turnover are more crime-filled than those where residents stay longer and build networks of trust. The Hinkstons’ eviction thus made both their former and new neighborhood less safe.

At 19, Patrice’s sister Natasha is still rather childlike. She is beautiful, and attracts attention from men. The Hinkstons’ apartment is starting to smell so bad that Doreen is considering calling Sherenna and Quentin. When they call about problems in the apartment, Sherenna places the blame on the Hinkstons and tells them to fix it themselves. The family attempt to do so, but are not always able to. Doreen eventually decides to call Sherenna about the plumbing, and after weeks trying to get hold of her is told that she is breaking her rental agreement by letting Patrice live with her.  

Landlords are allowed to rent units that do not meet “basic habitability requirements” as long as they let tenants know about any problems. When Patrice complained about problems in her old unit, Sherenna gradually fixed some of them, but eventually got irritated. Patrice threatened to sue her, which had no effect, and then withheld half her rent. However, Sherenna responded to this by refusing to fix anything until rent was paid in full. Eventually, Sherenna served Patrice an eviction notice.

Doreen decided to call a plumber herself and deduct the $150 he charged from her rent. Sherenna responded by evicting Doreen, who in turn chose not to pay her last month’s rent. Doreen knew she wouldn’t be able to find a cheaper place where her whole family would fit. Part of the problem was that rent in the city’s very “worst” neighborhoods was barely cheaper than in much safer, more prosperous communities. This has been true across the country since the 19th century, when rent in the most deprived New York City slums was actually 30% higher than uptown. In 1960, rent in black neighborhoods exceeded that in majority-white districts.

Landlords renting to the poorest tenants do not lower rates because they do not need to. In many cases, it is more cost-effective to evict a tenant who has fallen behind on their rent than to lower rent in the first place. Tenants who are financially secure and can reliably pay their rent are better protected; they can make complaints and order repairs, whereas for poorer tenants this is too risky. Poor tenants may know their rights, but they also know they can’t afford to act on them. Doreen and Patrice, for example, know that calling a building inspector would ultimately backfire on them. 

Between 2009-2011 almost half of Milwaukee renters experienced severe, sustained housing issues, from broken windows and clogged plumbing to pest infestations. African-Americans and tenants with children are statistically most likely to suffer these problems. Yet because they are most likely to result in multiple evictions, bad buildings are often the most profitable for landowners.

During Doreen and Sherenna’s dispute over the plumbing, Natasha realizes she is pregnant. Doreen and Natasha’s boyfriend, Malik, are thrilled, but Natasha has mixed feelings. She is still in love with a previous boyfriend who was killed in a robbery gone wrong at the age of 17. She vows she will not raise her baby in her mother’s overcrowded apartment, and starts looking for her own place. Doreen wants to move to Tennessee, and Patrice likes the idea, but Natasha wants to keep her baby near Malik, who has been working hard to prepare for his child’s arrival. Doreen promises Natasha that she will get a big room in the new house.