Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond

Author:Matthew Desmond [Desmond, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241260876
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2016-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

20.

Nobody Wants the North Side

The Lodge sat on the corner of Seventh and Vine Streets, near downtown. On most days, residents gathered near the entrance, talking, smoking, and running after their children. That was where Crystal had been spending most of her time since the final days of February. On Crystal’s eviction court papers, Sherrena had checked the box next to “the LANDLORD desires the premises for the following reason(s),” writing in: “Causing substantial disturbances with upper and lower tenants (with police involvement). Also, unauthorized subleasing to an evicted tenant.” Crystal was confused by the whole process. Could Sherrena call Arleen “unauthorized” when she knew about their arrangement from the start? She packed her things into two clear garbage bags and left without going to court, wrongly assuming that doing so would keep her name clean.

Crystal hated the food at the Lodge, and some of the maintenance men propositioned the residents for sex, offering fresh sheets, snacks, or extra shampoo.1 But she liked her room. It was warm, clean, and free. Said Crystal, “I ain’t paying no five fifty and feel like I’m getting nothing.” Plus, she was on the hunt for a new friend, and the Lodge was a great place to find one. It collected under a single roof dozens of people who had found themselves in especially desperate situations, who were all “going through a thing,” as shelter residents put it.2

People were attracted to Crystal. She was gregarious and funny with an enduring habit of slapping her hands together and laughing at herself. She would saunter out the doors of the Lodge, singing gospel, her hands raised in praise. Crystal had some suitors, but what she wanted most of all from her new friends, and what she had wanted from Arleen, was a mother figure. She found one in Vanetta.

Vanetta Evans had been staying at the Lodge since January. At twenty, she was not much older than Crystal, but she’d grown up fast. Vanetta had her first child, Kendal Jr., when she was sixteen; then a daughter, Tembi, the next year; and a third the year after that: a boy named Bo-Bo. You might say Vanetta was raised in the Robert Taylor Homes, Chicago’s infamous public housing towers, or you might say that her mentally challenged mother, whom Vanetta and her siblings unaffectionately called Shortcake, raised her “in almost every homeless shelter in Illinois and Wisconsin.” Crystal liked the way Vanetta carried herself. She was always put-together, with her hair pulled back tight in a small ponytail. She even wore her cell phone on a belt holder, like a landlord. Vanetta’s dark-brown skin matched Crystal’s, and she had a smoky, lounge-singer voice that she almost never raised at her kids. She could snap them in line by giving them the Look. When Kendal Jr. acted up, Vanetta pretended to call Big Kendal, his father, on the phone. The boy knew she was faking but would calm down anyway. When Bo-Bo had seizures, she rushed him to the hospital.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.