Evicted_ Poverty and Profit in the American City - Matthew Desmond Page 0,102

after monthly installments were increased or necessary housing upkeep set them back, they could be evicted as their homes were foreclosed and down payments pocketed. The profits were staggering. In 1966, a Chicago landlord told a court that on a single property he had made $42,500 in rent but paid only $2,400 in maintenance. When accused of making excessive profits, the landlord simply replied, “That’s why I bought the building.”22

The 1968 Civil Rights Act made housing discrimination illegal, but subtler forms prevailed. Crystal and Vanetta wanted to leave the ghetto, but landlords like the one on Fifteenth Street turned them away. Other landlords and property management companies—like Affordable Rentals—tried to avoid discriminating by setting clear criteria and holding all applicants to the same standards. But equal treatment in an unequal society could still foster inequality. Because black men were disproportionately incarcerated and black women disproportionately evicted, uniformly denying housing to applicants with recent criminal or eviction records still had an incommensurate impact on African Americans. When Crystal and Vanetta heard back from Affordable Rentals, they learned their application had been rejected on account of their arrest and eviction history.

Eviction itself often explained why some families lived on safe streets and others on dangerous ones, why some children attended good schools and others failing ones. The trauma of being forced from your home, the blemish of an eviction record, and the taxing rush to locate a new place to live pushed evicted renters into more depressed and dangerous areas of the city.23 This reality had not yet set in for Vanetta and Crystal. They were just coming out of the first, fresh-feeling phase of house hunting. It was only after they had tried for over fifty apartments that Crystal and Vanetta began reluctantly scouting in the inner city. The new friends were circling back to the ghetto but not fully committing to it.

—

Crystal had been working to keep her emotions in check. It was why she chose to stop by church Monday night instead of looking for housing. It was why she grabbed her music and sang after the incident with the landlord on Fifteenth Street. “This is too much, too much stress. But I’m not gonna make myself sick,” she said. When Crystal finally did blow up, it was at one of the shelter’s maintenance men, over clean linens he refused to supply. She was already in trouble for sleeping through a mandatory job training. Crystal blamed her sleep apnea. After the altercation with the maintenance man, Crystal was told to be out by breakfast the next morning.

Crystal spent the following day on the phone, trying to find someone who would open their doors to her. With no luck and night coming on, she sighed and called Minister Barber, who found an older couple in the congregation who agreed to help. Crystal spent the night in their La-Z-Boy recliner.

The following evening, after Bible study at Mt. Calvary, Crystal returned to the elderly couple’s house. Rain was falling hard onto dark, empty streets. It was that icy, bitter rain that comes when winter first begins to thaw into spring. Crystal knocked, and the husband cracked the door without unlatching the chain. The house was on Fourteenth and Burleigh, in one of the most crime-ridden areas of the city. Seeing Crystal, the man kept the chain taut, handed over a small bag of Crystal’s things, and shut the door.

Crystal figured it was because she didn’t “hit their hand.” But she didn’t have any money to give, having lent one of her cousins $400, mostly from her casino winnings. Her cousin needed rent money. When Vanetta heard about that, she said, “Crystal, if I was there I would have smacked the mess outta you! You don’t have a place to stay yourself. I don’t care if they your family or not, you been homeless for a grip, and you need a roof over your own head.”

Sometimes Crystal couldn’t help herself, like the time she and Vanetta were eating lunch at McDonald’s, and a boy walked in. He was maybe nine or ten in dirty clothes and with unkempt hair. One side of his face was swollen. The boy didn’t approach the counter. Instead, he wandered slowly through the tables, looking for scraps.

Crystal and Vanetta noticed him. “What you got?” Crystal asked, riffling through her pockets. The women pooled what they had to buy the boy dinner. Staring up at the menu, Crystal wrapped her arm around the boy like she was his big