Evicted_ Poverty and Profit in the American City - Matthew Desmond Page 0,59

more on his hip than his rump. Air fresheners swayed from his rearview mirror and a large speaker in the back thumped bass whenever one of them was not on the phone, which was almost never.

As night fell, Quentin took a call from a rooming-house tenant, touching his Bluetooth earpiece. When the call ended, he said, “They money burning a hole in they pockets. You know, they got habits.”

Quentin parked in front of the rooming house and went through a small ritual. He tucked his chains into his shirt, removed his pinky ring, and slid a sweatband over his thick bracelet. He had learned that “some people think you’re out to take their rent money to buy, you know, fancy things.” A tenant had recently pointed to Quentin’s bling and said, “You just want to collect my rent to live your own life.” When he relayed this story to Sherrena, she shrugged and said, “How else we supposed to do it?” To live, she meant.

The rooming-house tenants had smoked something but had not yet run through the rent money. The place was filled with music, laughter, and that carefreeness the benefits of the first of the month bring and the bills of the fifth of the month shoo away. The only tenant who appeared sober was an old man who had just moved in. He sat on his bed, shirt buttoned to the top. “Coming at night, huh?” he asked with a Mississippi drawl.

“When do you want to pay your rent?” Quentin replied.

“I’m ready. Always owing something.”

Up walked another tenant with glazed-over eyes. “Hey, nigga!” he addressed Quentin, holding an unlit cigarette and leaning on the wall for support. “I, I be at the bar, man. They be fucking with me, man!”

“Straight up?” Quentin asked, sliding the old man’s money in his pocket and heading for the door.

Back in the Suburban, Quentin presented Sherrena with a wad of cash. She had to admit it: “Those crackheads pay the rent!” They laughed.

It was almost nine p.m. when Sherrena asked Quentin to drive to the home of a new prospective tenant. Ladona invited Sherrena in and introduced her eight-year-old son, Nathaniel. A working single mother, Ladona was eager to move. “They shoot in broad daylight, right in the middle of the block,” she said. “We got a hidin’ place upstairs. And I’m getting tired of running up there.”

“They need to get the National Guard up in here,” Sherrena replied.

“Something. I’m leaving.” Then Ladona handed Sherrena $500. “I want that house, and I’m not playin’ with you. So Friday I’ll give you another hundred. And then the following Friday, another hundred. And then the following week, another one seventy-five.”

Sherrena climbed back in the Suburban, which Quentin had kept running. “She’s crazy about that house.” Then she went on: “There are so many rent-assistance people that have been calling me. You wouldn’t believe it.”

“Ah, they been calling me too,” Quentin said.

“For single families?”

“For anything.”

Ladona had a housing voucher. Sherrena and Quentin didn’t accept rent assistance in most of their properties because they didn’t want to deal with the program’s picky inspectors. “Rent assistance is a pain in the ass,” Sherrena said. Voucher holders made up a small share of the market anyway—only 6 percent of renter households in the city—and were not worth the headache. (The “SSI people,” on the other hand, “now, that is an untapped market,” Sherrena thought.)

But Sherrena had recently purchased the house that Ladona coveted, a two-story gem, and she was pretty sure it would pass inspection. If it did, the payout could be significant. With a housing voucher, Ladona would pay a small portion of the rent—30 percent of her income—and taxpayers would pick up the rest. Sherrena’s rent would be virtually guaranteed. It would also be above market rate.

For each metropolitan area, the Department of Housing and Urban Development sets a Fair Market Rent (FMR): the most a landlord could charge a family in possession of a federal housing voucher.2 FMRs were calculated at the municipal level, which often included near and outlying suburbs. This meant that both distressed and exclusive neighborhoods were thrown into the equation. New York City’s FMR calculation included SoHo and the South Bronx. Chicago’s included the Gold Coast and the South Side ghetto. This was by design, so that a family could take their voucher and find housing in safe and prosperous areas in the city or its surrounding suburbs. But the program did not bring about large gains in racial or economic