Evicted_ Poverty and Profit in the American City - Matthew Desmond Page 0,43

whole month has passed, and now she owes a total balance of about $870.”

“Okay, okay,” the commissioner cut in. She turned to Arleen. “So your landlady at this point wants you to move out.”

“Okay.”

“Do you have minor children at home?”

“Yup.”

“How many?”

“Two.”

Gramling Perez was one of the commissioners who sometimes subscribed to the court custom of giving tenants two extra days in the home for each dependent child.

“I’ll be out before the first,” Arleen said. “New Year’s at the latest.”

“But see, that goes into the beginning of rental period again,” Sherrena interjected.

“So you’re willing to do a stipulation if she’s gone before the first?” the commissioner asked.

“Well,” Sherrena began, her annoyance no longer even partially concealed. “I have people lined up that want to move in on the first.”

But the commissioner had spotted an opening. She knew Arleen would have to leave, but she was trying to spare her the blemish of an eviction record. She tried again: “Would you be willing to offer something in return for her agreement to move out by the thirty-first, voluntarily?”

“What would I be proposing to offer?” Sherrena asked coldly.

“To dismiss.”

“But what about the other money that she owes me?” A dismissed eviction judgment meant a dropped money judgment as well, and obtaining money judgments, even against single mothers on welfare, was one of the primary reasons Sherrena evicted tenants through the court system.

“Well, my point is that you maybe give up a couple hundred dollars so you don’t lose these tenants who are coming in January.” The commissioner knew Sherrena could pocket Arleen’s security deposit, leaving an unpaid rent balance of around $320. “In exchange for an agreement that she won’t go after you—”

Then Arleen interrupted the commissioner. “I’m not trying to be in her money,” she said. She said it forcefully and looked offended. Arleen had gathered who was making the calls, and it wasn’t the white lady with the pearl necklace.

Sherrena, who had been mulling things over, leaned forward in her chair. “I don’t want to dismiss anything. I really don’t….I mean, I’m tired of losing out on every single—” She began slapping the table with each word.

Arleen looked at the commissioner. “I mean, I’m not trying to stay. I mean, I understand what she’s saying. That’s her place.”

“I understand,” said the commissioner.

“I’m not trying to be there.”

“I understand.”

The commissioner shuffled the papers and said nothing more.

In the pause, Arleen took another tack. She thought of the broken window, the sporadic hot water, the grimy carpet, and said, in a dismissive voice, “I would say something, but I’m not even gonna go there. I’m all right.” That was her defense.17

The commissioner looked at Arleen and said, “Here’s the deal. Ma’am, you’re getting to move out voluntarily by January first….If you don’t do that, if you don’t move out, then your landlord is entitled to come back here without further notice, and she can get a writ of eviction. And then the sheriff will come.”

—

When Sherrena and Arleen walked out of the courthouse, a gentle snow was still falling. Sherrena had agreed to give Arleen a ride home. In the car, Sherrena paused to rub her neck, and Arleen lowered her forehead into the palm of her hand. Both women had splitting headaches. Sherrena attributed hers to how court had gone. She was still fuming that Gramling Perez had reduced her money judgment. Arleen’s was from hunger. She hadn’t eaten all day.

“I don’t want to be putting you and your babies out in the cold,” Sherrena told Arleen as the car moved slowly through the slushy streets. “I wouldn’t want nobody to do me like that….Some of them landlords, they get away with murder down there. But there’s some like me, who get in front of the commissioner, and she say whatever’s on her mind, and that’s the way it’s gonna go….She knows this system is screwed. It’s all one-sided.”18

Arleen stared out the window and watched the snow settle noiselessly on the black iron lampposts, the ornate dome of the Public Library, the Church of the Gesu’s Gothic towers.

“And some of these tenants,” Sherrena was saying, “they nasty as hell. They bring roaches with ’em. They bring mice with ’em. And who gotta pay for it? Oh, what about Doreen Hinkston? With her ray-man noodles down the sink, and they keep calling me about the sink being stopped up….And I gotta call the plumber. Then you pouring grease down the sink from your fried chicken, you pouring the grease down the sink, and