Evicted_ Poverty and Profit in the American City - Matthew Desmond Page 0,90
the aged; and high-rises originally built for families were converted for elderly use.8
Larraine found two addresses on HUD’s Housing Inventory that accepted applications for people who were neither elderly nor handicapped and that were located on the far South Side of the city. Larraine did not consider the near South Side to be an option, let alone the North Side. The application asked if she had ever been evicted. Larraine circled yes and wrote: “I had some complications with the landlord, and he evicted me.”
—
On the day Larraine had to be out of Beaker’s trailer, ice spread over the city. An early December snow had fallen, melted, and, when the temperature dropped, froze. Larraine stood in her kitchen listening to the sawing sounds of people scraping their car windows and chipping the ice from their doors. There was a pile of trash on the floor, mainly Beaker’s empty Maverick cigarette boxes and chocolate-milk bottles, and dirty dishes were piled in the kitchen sink. The cold had immobilized Larraine under blankets on the couch—the cold and the question of what to do next. Little had been cleaned since winter had arrived. “I don’t care anymore,” she said, swallowing pain relievers and antidepressants.
Larraine had applied to or called on forty apartments. She had had no luck on the private market, and her applications to public housing were still being processed. Larraine didn’t know where she was going to go. She was considering approaching Thomas, a man her age who lived alone in the trailer park, or Ms. Betty, whom Larraine knew only as an “old lady who lives across the road.” Larraine packed up her remaining things. Her plan was to pay Public Storage $50 to keep them.
Late in the day, Larraine knocked on Ms. Betty’s door. She was a small white woman with crystal eyes and silvering blond hair falling past her shoulders in double braids. Ms. Betty looked younger when seated and enjoying a slow cigarette, but she walked like an old woman, hunched with one arm held close. What the women knew of each other came from passing hellos and rumors. But when Larraine asked Betty if she could stay with her, Betty said yes.
“Sure you can stay with me, until after the winter.” Ms. Betty raised an eyebrow. “I know you’re not as big of a problem as they say you are.”
Larraine smiled. “I’ll be able to take a shower and everything,” she said.
Betty’s trailer might have been the most cluttered in the whole park. There was room for Larraine but little else. Ms. Betty had piled her tables with magazines and old mail and canned food and bottles of soy sauce and candy. In the living room, a tree bent toward the window, shedding its leaves on the floor, and keepsakes were clustered together on shelves next to a picture of Jesus. There was an order to the mess. The bathroom drawers bore a resemblance to the nuts-and-bolts aisle at the hardware store, with all the travel-sized tubes of toothpaste and bobby pins and hair ties and nail clippers grouped together in their own respective compartments. In the kitchen, Betty had hung a sign: SELF-CONTROL IS DEFINED AS REFRAINING FROM CHOKING THE SHIT OUT OF SOMEONE WHO IS DESPERATELY DESERVING OF IT. Larraine agreed to pay Betty $100 a month.
A few days after moving in with Ms. Betty, Larraine heard back on her applications to public housing in the form of two rejection letters. Each letter listed a pair of reasons Larraine’s applications were turned away: “Collections from the State of Wisconsin” and “Eviction History.”
Larraine understood “Eviction History,” but not “Collections from the State of Wisconsin.” When she called to find out more, she was told she owed property taxes. “Property!” She laughed after getting off the phone. “I’d love to know how I owe property taxes.”9
Betty thought Larraine should appeal. She looked over the top of her large glasses and said, “You have to fight, Larraine. I had to fight for my Medicaid.”
“I don’t have the energy,” Larraine answered. “And I don’t feel like getting rejected again.”10
Betty nodded. She understood.
A few days later found Larraine in an especially religious mood, her church’s Truth Class fresh in her mind.
“When you look at Jesus, what do you see?” Larraine asked Betty.
“A hottie,” Betty replied without missing a beat. A long, unlit cigarette shot out of her lips like a plank from a ship.
“Oh, Betty!” Larraine giggled.
Betty sauntered over and tapped the Jesus picture. “Hottie,” she repeated. “I’ve always