Evicted: Prologue: Cold City Summary & Analysis

It is January 2008; Jori and his cousins are snowball fighting when a car pulls up and a man gets out. Jori runs into the apartment where he lives with his mother, Arleen, and younger brother, Jafaris. Jori locks the door but the man breaks it down, before leaving. On learning about the broken door, the landlord evicts Arleen and her sons. If Arleen doesn’t leave on time, she will either have to pay $350 for a truck to load her belongings into storage, or have all her possessions left out on the sidewalk.

Arleen takes 13-year-old Jori and 5-year-old Jafaris to a homeless shelter called the Lodge, where they remain until Arleen finds a house in the predominantly black North Side of Milwaukee. Although the house frequently has no running water, Arleen describes it as her “favorite place.” Yet after only a few weeks the city deems the house “unfit for human habitation” and evicts her again. This time the family move into a neighborhood with a heavy population of drug dealers.

Four months later, Arleen finds a better apartment, and the family moves there. The rent is $550 a month, average for a two-bedroom in an impoverished neighborhood in the fourth-poorest city in America. Arleen receives a $628 welfare check each month. Upon their arrival Arleen’s new landlord, a black woman named Sherenna, drops off a large back of groceries, some of which are from the food pantry and some of which she purchased herself. 

In the past, evictions were rare, even in impoverished communities. Neighbors would turn up in massive numbers to protest evictions, sometimes overpowering the indifferent marshals. Today, many sheriffs are employed full-time to carry out evictions, and housing courts are always packed with families. Most tenants spend between 50-70% of their income on rent, and millions are evicted each year because they cannot pay. Half of evictions in Milwaukee are “informal,” meaning that they are not legally mandated. Overall, between 2009 and 2011 one in eight Milwaukee renters were evicted. Similar statistics exist in cities such as Kansas City, Cleveland, and Chicago.

Evicted focuses on eight families in Milwaukee, but “tells an American story.” The book not only analyzes evictions, but also describes their “fallout,” showing how eviction affects many more people than the individuals who are evicted. The housing crisis is one of the “most urgent and pressing issues” in America. While focusing on other factors such as jobs, welfare, and mass incarceration is important, until people are able to pay their rent the problem of poverty will persist.