Eviction day
O'Gorman, Angie
Angle O'Gorman 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...
...She still has a place to live-and now it's furnished...
...This neighborhood is part and parcel of larger national wage and housing trends...
...Everyone seems to have a cell phone...
...The suffering and loss behind the giveaway are ignored because these things-no matter their quality-can now be ours...
...Angie O'Gorman directs the Immigration Law Project Legal Services of Eastern Missouri in Saint Louis...
...This is an eviction...
...Their block and mine don't mingle much...
...Months ago, a man, a woman, and two children had moved in...
...A bureau is slung onto the heap...
...The customer buys it, knowing she won't pay it off...
...This is win-win-win...
...The neighborhood ends there, in awkward silence...
...Other scavengers arrive from down the block, taking a more hands-on approach...
...The child-mom continues to rifle through bulging plastic bags, leaving the furniture untouched...
...Boarding up the slum landlord's idea of "rental property...
...Their frequency has normalized the process for me, and perhaps that is what's wrong: the normalcy...
...When I was growing up, neighbors helped one another...
...She is a young child-mother-maybe eighteen...
...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...
...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...
...The eviction crew gets the thrill of heaving it out the door of someone else's house...
...She carries her infant on one hip and a cell phone in her free hand...
...They seemed like nice folks...
...There goes my table...
...in our materialistic culture, that's simple "market logic," and all other considerations pale...
...I wonder if she feels undeserving of the finer haul...
...In Nickel and Dimed (Henry Holt & Company), Barbara Ehrenreich reflects on her three years "underground" as a low-wage worker...
...I wonder why they took this job, what it pays, and whether they are moonlighting to supplement other employment that is far more satisfying...
...Those who rifle through the items have left remains scattered down the street...
...The scene has disappeared, evicted from consciousness...
...The sheriff kicks up his foot to demonstrate, secure in "the work of justice...
...She calls this segment of the workforce, stuffed into shelters and transient motels, "canned labor...
...But when her attention turns to my bookcase, I feel threatened...
...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...
...From a distance, I'd guess that is the only way she could afford it...
...A managerial type in professional suit gets out, stares at the pile, and shakes his head in disgust...
...Its drawers fall out, and papers and underclothing scatter...
...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...
...A tax write-off...
...Partly for reasons of race, partly because of crime in the neighborhood, people stay to themselves...
...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...
...I realize it is the first one I have actually seen in progress...
...A neighbor complains, and the sheriff advises that a city truck will come in a day or so to clean up...
...There is no more commitment than that...
...I wonder if relief does not underlie her celebratory sense: At least this time it wasn't she...
...Fortunately, the family/occupants are absent...
...Isn't this the free market at work...
...Dare I go down after the bookcase, my second choice...
...Some of the furniture appears to be in good condition: mattresses in plastic covers and clean box springs...
...I may have lost track...
...But it would be good to call for themselves, to give a prod...
...For all intents and purposes, the bookcase is structurally nonfunctional: four pressed-wooden shelves are screwed into thick cardboard backing...
...It is like a sidewalk sale from Sodom and Gomorrah...
...Usually, I see just the aftermath...
...The curb fills with personal accoutrement...
...I hope this isn't satisfying, that it doesn't meet some primal urge to live off the lives on the next rung down...
...I don't know how much rent they finally owed, or how much they were behind on the furniture...
...Her baby sits amid the refuse, contented...
...She's got herself a bedroom set, the scavenger-mom...
...From up here it sounds like kitchenware and utensils...
...Am I above such behavior...
...A week later, I notice the unclaimed refuse has been carted off and the grass underneath cut...
...My viewing angle prevents me from seeing exactly which house(s) are under scrutiny...
...Cream-colored wood, all mirrors around the bed and dresser, amazingly intact...
...Isn't this a potential business deduction...
...We should all turn to salt, we pillars of the community...
...You walk by and say, "Hi...
...Now I know why the furnishings look better than I would have expected...
...The family directly across the street from the eviction carts it off...
...Perhaps the flexing is just some neurotransmitter's response to the fact that there still is a rung below theirs...
...An eight-drawer dresser, headboard, hutch-and no payments...
...The young evictors-some brawny, some scrawny-seem to love flexing their muscles...
...I don't need it, but I like it, even if I have nowhere to put it...
...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...
...He starts loading some of the larger items, and I now understand the cell phone...
...I watch from my window and try to make sense of what is happening...
...Housing, in almost every case, is the principal source of disruption in their lives," she writes of her coworkers...
...She seems unable to discern junk from quality-going after frying pans in the midst of big-ticket items...
...Mom's taking a whole plastic sack...
...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...
...Next comes a black wrought-iron table with detachable acrylic top, which separates in midair...
...A pile begins to accumulate...
...Besides, it's free and I should take it...
...I wonder if there has been a break-in...
...Up drives a van from a local rent-to-own store...
...I leave it, embarrassed at participating in the orgy...
...Back in my second-story perch, I return to wondering why this particular eviction has raised such contradictory reactions in me...
...Now, we help ourselves to one another's lives...
...Ah, a Dodge van pulls up and mom consults with the driver...
...And this time, I have also been part of the process-not just a passerby, but a near neighbor reaping profit from someone's loss...
...I am set on the wrought-iron table...
...I go out to give the bookcase a closer look while the child-mom is distracted by a couch...
...Why this fascination with the nuts and bolts of cookery when decent chairs and end tables are within reach...
...The retailer knows it is shoddy merchandise that won't last until the final payment...
...Who was the family that had lived there...
...Fine," is the answer...
...One woman catches my eye...
...I am not even sure they are the same family I saw move in...
...Are they closing down the drug house...
...It sways in the breeze, and while good-looking, proves to be more of matchbox quality than I had thought...
Vol. 129 • November 2002 • No. 19
