Eviction day: an eyewitness account

From the window of my second-story apartment, I watch a sheriff with civilian cohort sleuthing about on the next block. My viewing angle prevents me from seeing exactly which house(s) are under scrutiny. I wonder if there has been a break-in. Are they closing down the drug house? Boarding up the slum landlord's idea of "rental property"? Under the sheriff's steady eye, the civilians enter one of the buildings and soon a couch comes flying out the front door, bouncing to the curb. This is an eviction. I watch from my window and try to make sense of what is happening.

Next comes a black wrought-iron table with detachable acrylic top, which separates in midair. A pile begins to accumulate. Some of the furniture appears to be in good condition: mattresses in plastic covers and clean box springs. A bureau is slung onto the heap. Its drawers fall out, and papers and underclothing scatter. The curb fills with personal accoutrement. Fortunately, the family/occupants are absent.

The young evictors--some brawny, some scrawny--seem to love flexing their muscles. They nod at the couch, the beds, the chair deftly dumped on the pile, then hoist up their britches, twitch their biceps, and start back for more. I wonder why they took this job, what it pays, and whether they are moonlighting to supplement other employment that is far more satisfying. I hope this isn't satisfying, that it doesn't meet some primal urge to live off the lives on the next rung down. Perhaps the flexing is just some neurotransmitter's response to the fact that there still is a rung below theirs.

Up drives a van from a local rent-to-own store. Now I know why the furnishings look better than I would have expected. A managerial type in professional suit gets out, stares at the pile, and shakes his head in disgust. He has been ripped off again, he gestures to the sheriff, and I can sense his disdain from two stories up.

But why such disgust? Isn't this a potential business deduction? A tax write-off? Isn't this the free market at work? While everyone seems to commiserate over the irresponsibility of the renter/customer, the game itself goes unquestioned: The company charges high for great-looking, low-quality merchandise, interest tacked on for the favor of lending. The retailer knows it is shoddy merchandise that won't last until the final payment. The customer buys it, knowing she won't pay it off. The eviction crew gets the thrill of heaving it out the door of someone else's house. This is win-win-win. The rent-to-own man gets his tax-rebate papers signed by the sheriff, climbs back into the truck, and leaves his damaged goods for the scavengers.

I scavenge visually, from on high, unwilling as yet to admit my participation. I am set on the wrought-iron table. I don't need it, but I like it, even if I have nowhere to put it. Besides, it's free and I should take it; in our materialistic culture, that's simple "market logic," and all other considerations pale.

Other scavengers arrive from down the block, taking a more hands-on approach. Everyone seems to have a cell phone. One woman catches my eye. She is a young child-mother--maybe eighteen. She carries her infant on one hip and a cell phone in her free hand. She seems unable to discern junk from quality--going after frying pans in the midst of big-ticket items.

There goes my table. The family directly across the street from the eviction carts it off. Dare I go down after the bookcase, my second choice? Am I above such behavior? I think I should be but am not sure why. After all, evictions are part of the cycle in this low-wage/no-wage, now post-Welfare Reform neighborhood. Their frequency has normalized the process for me, and perhaps that is what's wrong: the normalcy. This neighborhood is part and parcel of larger national wage and housing trends. While low-income housing in America is disappearing (6.7 million units gone in the last thirty years), the average minimum-wage worker must now labor eighty-seven hours a week to rent a two-bedroom apartment at 30 percent of her income--the 30-percent figure making it "affordable housing," according to the government's definition. In Nickel and Dimed (Henry Holt & Company), Barbara Ehrenreich reflects on her three years "underground" as a low-wage worker. "Housing, in almost every case, is the principal source of disruption in their lives," she writes of her coworkers. She calls this segment of the workforce, stuffed into shelters and transient motels, "canned labor."

The child-mom continues to rifle through bulging plastic bags, leaving the furniture untouched. I wonder if she feels undeserving of the finer haul. Her baby sits amid the refuse, contented. Mom's taking a whole plastic sack. From up here it sounds like kitchenware and utensils. Why this fascination with the nuts and bolts of cookery when decent chairs and end tables are within reach? Ah, a Dodge van pulls up and mom consults with the driver. He starts loading some of the larger items, and I now understand the cell phone. But when her attention turns to my bookcase, I feel threatened.