Evicted
by Matthew Desmond

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Larraine Character Analysis

Larraine is a white woman in her 50s who lives in the trailer park. She is very poor, deeply religious, and likes to spend money whenever she can on luxury items to make her life less miserable. She is evicted from her trailer and experiences sustained housing insecurity after this point.

Larraine Quotes in Evicted

The Evicted quotes below are all either spoken by Larraine or refer to Larraine. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Poverty, Exploitation, and Profit Theme Icon
).

Chapter 3 Quotes

You've got to wonder if the street people don't have the right idea. Just live on the street. Don't have to pay rent to nobody.

Related Characters: Larraine (speaker), Tobin Charney
Page Number and Citation: 40
Explanation and Analysis:
Tobin tries to avoid evicting his tenants, but he is also single-minded about collecting rent and will employ whatever means necessary to do so. One of his tenants, a woman named Larraine Jenkins who pays her rent with SSI, wonders aloud if it is better to live on the street than have one’s life constantly dominated by the need to make rent. Larraine is probably half-joking, and her words may seem rather extreme. At the same time, considering the amount of distress paying rent causes to the tenants documented in the book, Larraine’s logic might not be as absurd as Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus vo

Chapter 9 Quotes

Men often avoided eviction by laying concrete, patching roofs, or painting rooms for landlords. But women almost never approached their landlord with a similar offer. Some women—taxed by child care, welfare requirements, or work obligations—could not spare the time. But many others simply did not conceive of working off the rent as a possibility. When women did approach their landlords with such an offer, it sometimes involved trading sex for rent.

The power to dictate who could stay and who must go; the power to expel or forgive: it was an old power, and it was not without caprice.

Related Characters: Larraine (speaker)
Page Number and Citation: 129
Explanation and Analysis:
Served a 24-hour eviction notice, Larraine is struggling to find a way to stay in her trailer. Sometimes tenants are able to successfully persuade their landlords that they will pay an overdue balance and temporarily ward off the threat of eviction. Men are often more able to do this than women, partly because they are more likely to engage in a confrontation with their landlord rather than simply avoiding them. This passage explores other reasons behind the gendered disparity of success in negotiating unpaid rent. Throughout the book, Desmond shows that men are in a better position than women when Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro perferendis. Sit neque odit. Tenetur qui dignissimos. Qui et ut. Voluptate labore corporis. Hic tempore laborum. Nisi quia ea. Quia soluta itaque. Deleniti nisi earum. Ad tenetur

Chapter 18 Quotes

To Sammy, Pastor Daryl, and others, Larraine was poor because she threw money away. But the reverse was more true. Larraine threw money away because she was poor.

Related Characters: Larraine (speaker), Pastor Daryl (speaker)
Page Number and Citation: 219
Explanation and Analysis:
After multiple meetings at the welfare services building, Larraine is finally able to get her food stamps reinstated. She spends her first month’s allowance on a single meal: a lobster dinner that she eats alone to celebrate her and Glen’s anniversary. Larraine is prone to occasionally spending money on luxury items she can’t afford, and many close to her believe that it is this habit that keeps her in poverty. The people close to her (including her pastor, Pastor Daryl) believe that Larraine contributes to her own poverty by spending money in frivolous ways. Yet Larraine realizes the reality: she Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Un

Larraine loved to cook. "I have a right to live, and I have a right to live like I want to live," she said. "People don’t realize that even poor people get tired of the same old taste. Like, I literally hate hot dogs, but I was brought up on them. So you think, “When I get older, I will have steak.” So now I'm older. And I do."

Related Characters: Larraine (speaker)
Page Number and Citation: 220
Explanation and Analysis:
Larraine’s seemingly frivolous choices like spending her whole month’s allowance of food stamps on one meal in fact stem from the inescapability of her poverty. She knows that no amount of scrimping and saving will allow her to lift herself out of poverty, so instead she affords herself occasional moments of pleasure and luxury whenever she can. This connects to Desmond’s earlier assertion that Larraine “threw money away because she was poor,” rather than the other way around, and counters critiques that Larraine is the cause of her own poverty. Those in poverty are not there because of rare moments Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi.
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Larraine Character Timeline in Evicted

The timeline below shows where the character Larraine appears in Evicted. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 3: Hot Water
Poverty, Exploitation, and Profit Theme Icon
Inequality, Injustice, and Discrimination Theme Icon
Housing as a Human Right Theme Icon
Hopelessness and Lack of Choice Theme Icon
One of Tobin’s tenants, Larraine, receives SSI after a childhood fall resulted in learning difficulties. Around the time of Tobin’s... (full context)
Poverty, Exploitation, and Profit Theme Icon
Inequality, Injustice, and Discrimination Theme Icon
Housing as a Human Right Theme Icon
Hopelessness and Lack of Choice Theme Icon
Larraine is a deeply religious 54-year-old woman with two grownup daughters and a grandson. Terrified by... (full context)
Chapter 9: Order Some Carryout
Poverty, Exploitation, and Profit Theme Icon
Inequality, Injustice, and Discrimination Theme Icon
Housing as a Human Right Theme Icon
Community and Interconnection Theme Icon
Hopelessness and Lack of Choice Theme Icon
Larraine wakes up early as usual. Her trailer is pristinely neat and tidy with matching interiors.... (full context)
Poverty, Exploitation, and Profit Theme Icon
Housing as a Human Right Theme Icon
Community and Interconnection Theme Icon
Larraine grew up in a public housing complex in South Milwaukee. Her mother was physically disabled... (full context)
Hopelessness and Lack of Choice Theme Icon
Larraine and her next husband, Glen, had a “consuming, brutal kind of love.” Glen was an... (full context)
Community and Interconnection Theme Icon
Hopelessness and Lack of Choice Theme Icon
Of Larraine’s four siblings, only her youngest brother, Ruben, owns his own home. She knows it is... (full context)
Poverty, Exploitation, and Profit Theme Icon
Inequality, Injustice, and Discrimination Theme Icon
Housing as a Human Right Theme Icon
Community and Interconnection Theme Icon
Hopelessness and Lack of Choice Theme Icon
...(31% and 44%) than the average white family (11%) between 2007 and 2011. At church, Larraine’s pastor, Pastor Daryl, preaches about the problem of people only following Christianity halfway. Daryl strongly... (full context)
Poverty, Exploitation, and Profit Theme Icon
Inequality, Injustice, and Discrimination Theme Icon
Housing as a Human Right Theme Icon
Community and Interconnection Theme Icon
Hopelessness and Lack of Choice Theme Icon
...tenants deal with overdue rent and the threat of eviction by ignoring their landlords, as Larraine is doing now. Men tend to be more confrontational, which leads to more success in... (full context)
Poverty, Exploitation, and Profit Theme Icon
Inequality, Injustice, and Discrimination Theme Icon
Housing as a Human Right Theme Icon
Community and Interconnection Theme Icon
Hopelessness and Lack of Choice Theme Icon
Finally, Ruben reluctantly agrees to pay Larraine’s rent, coming to the trailer park to give Tobin the money himself. However, Tobin refuses... (full context)
Chapter 13: E-24
Inequality, Injustice, and Discrimination Theme Icon
Community and Interconnection Theme Icon
Hopelessness and Lack of Choice Theme Icon
Larraine cleans out Beaker’s trailer while he remains in the hospital, recovering from his triple-bypass surgery.... (full context)
Chapter 18: Lobster on Food Stamps
Poverty, Exploitation, and Profit Theme Icon
Inequality, Injustice, and Discrimination Theme Icon
Housing as a Human Right Theme Icon
Hopelessness and Lack of Choice Theme Icon
...would be given food vouchers, there is a crowd of thousands outside the welfare building. Larraine spends a whole day waiting before her number is called. She explains that she missed... (full context)
Poverty, Exploitation, and Profit Theme Icon
Inequality, Injustice, and Discrimination Theme Icon
Hopelessness and Lack of Choice Theme Icon
Larraine goes straight from her appointment to a furniture store where she admiringly inspects a flat... (full context)
Poverty, Exploitation, and Profit Theme Icon
Inequality, Injustice, and Discrimination Theme Icon
Community and Interconnection Theme Icon
Hopelessness and Lack of Choice Theme Icon
Larraine ultimately does not put the TV on layaway; instead, she spends all her food stamps... (full context)
Poverty, Exploitation, and Profit Theme Icon
Inequality, Injustice, and Discrimination Theme Icon
Housing as a Human Right Theme Icon
Community and Interconnection Theme Icon
Hopelessness and Lack of Choice Theme Icon
Living in “grinding poverty” (rather than “stable poverty”) as Larraine does means that there is essentially no chance she will ever be able to improve... (full context)
Poverty, Exploitation, and Profit Theme Icon
Inequality, Injustice, and Discrimination Theme Icon
Housing as a Human Right Theme Icon
Community and Interconnection Theme Icon
Hopelessness and Lack of Choice Theme Icon
Larraine’s daughter Jayme comments that both Larraine and Beaker need to grow up and learn to... (full context)
Poverty, Exploitation, and Profit Theme Icon
Inequality, Injustice, and Discrimination Theme Icon
Housing as a Human Right Theme Icon
Community and Interconnection Theme Icon
Hopelessness and Lack of Choice Theme Icon
...popular policy than pushing public housing for all. When the day of her eviction comes, Larraine still doesn’t have anywhere to go. She knocks on the door of Ms. Betty, a... (full context)