Summary: Part 3, After: Chapters 18–20

In Chapter 18, “Lobster on Food Stamps,” Larraine visited the welfare building in hopes of restoring her food stamps. She had to go back a second time but was eventually successful. Her food stamps were $80 a month. Larraine used her food stamps to buy lobster tails, other seafood, salad, and a pie. She ate it all in one dinner. Her family and her pastor, Pastor Daryl, believed it was these kinds of decisions that made Larraine poor. But Larraine spent money on luxuries instead of rent because she felt that if she were going to be poor, she might as well have some moments of pleasure. No amount of scrimping and saving was going to bring her out of poverty.

The gas company shut off gas to Beaker’s trailer, and cold weather set in. This was common in the trailer park. Then Beaker decided to move to an assisted-living facility. Larraine couldn’t make the rent on his trailer by herself. She moved in temporarily with another trailer park tenant, Ms. Betty.

In Chapter 19, “Little,” Pam and Ned had relocated to a cheap motel and were looking for a rental. Ned lost his job because he’d taken days off to move from the trailer park. Eviction wasn’t only a result of job loss; it was also a cause of job loss. They sent their oldest three children to live with a friend, and then another friend offered them a couch to sleep on. Ned got an under-the-table job working on motorcycles, but they still had a hard time finding a place, since many places didn’t want to rent to people with children. Housing discrimination against families was supposedly illegal, but the law was rarely enforced.

In Chapter 20, “Nobody Wants the North Side,” Crystal moved into the homeless shelter known as the “Lodge.” There, she met Vanetta Evans, a woman only a little older than Crystal in years but much older in experience. Vanetta had been arrested for robbery, leading to eviction and then moving to the Lodge with her four kids. Both Vanetta and Crystal thought the other had odd priorities—Vanetta thought Crystal’s devotion to church was strange, and Crystal saw Vanetta’s work on her GED as unimportant. But they decided to look for an apartment together, focusing on the Hispanic South Side of town but eventually learning that racism and their past records of arrest and eviction were going to make finding a place much harder. They encountered racial discrimination, not unusual in such a segregated city.

Racial segregation, Desmond explains, is baked into the country’s history, from colonial America to modern times. Slums developed because there was “a segregated and captive tenant base” that landlords could exploit, and legislation meant to help people afford housing mostly benefited white people while blocking Black people from homeownership.

Crystal was disruptive at the shelter and was thrown out as a result.

Analysis: Part 3, After: Chapters 18–20

These chapters take a hard look at the results of eviction. They follow several recently evicted tenants to show what happens in the immediate aftermath. Most go immediately into temporary housing, which also proves to be unstable. For example, Larraine has moved in with her brother Beaker, but this situation doesn’t last, and she then moves in with Ms. Betty. Pam and Ned are living in a cheap motel and can’t find a new rental because they have children and criminal records. Crystal goes to a shelter after her eviction and can’t get another place because of discrimination and her past eviction. Vanetta had been evicted for being arrested and now can’t find a new place because of the arrest and the eviction. In each case, the situation seems hopeless.

As often happens when faced with large, messy social problems that don’t have simple solutions, politicians make excuses for why they are unable to fix what is so obviously broken. Society often blames people for their own entrenched poverty, Desmond notes. Given this viewpoint, he says, refusing to help the impoverished is virtuous, and helping the person is ethically wrong. This sort of blame allows someone who can help to choose not to help while also feeling virtuous. This is what happens when Larraine reaches out for help from her pastor. Pastor Daryl believes Larraine is to blame for her poverty, so he can refuse to help her and still feel good about himself.

In contrast to pointing the finger of blame at the poor and unhoused themselves, Desmond gives a little history lesson to show that discrimination in societal systems is a huge contributing factor to both poverty and homelessness. He shows that discriminatory systems in lending and real estate, fostered by discriminatory laws, led to the concentration of Black Americans into slums. He shows that evictions lead to more evictions, poverty leads to more poverty, and poverty can lead to criminal activity that then leads to eviction. And on and on it goes.