Unlike in past decades, when the typical inner-city landlord was white, the deeper you went into the inner city, the more likely it became that your landlord was black: in neighborhoods where at least two-thirds of the residents were African American, 3 in 4 renters had a black landlord. On white landlords in black neighborhoods in past eras, see St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1945), 718.
Most tenants in Milwaukee rented from a man. (Eighty-two percent of Milwaukee tenants reported renting from a single individual, as opposed to a couple, and 62 percent of those lone-wolf landlords were men.) Sherrena was bucking that trend. But when she stepped out of the car in front of Lamar’s house, as a black landlord meeting her black tenants, she was more norm than exception. Milwaukee Area Renters Study, 2009–2011.
3. I did not personally witness this event. The scene was reconstructed through interviews with Sherrena, Quentin, and Community Advocates social workers.
4. Of those, about 1 in 7 had their utilities shut off. A family renting crumbling housing on a dangerous street paid less rent than an affluent one living in a swanky downtown loft—but their utility costs often were equivalent. In some cases, renters living at the bottom of the market paid more for utilities than those living at the top because they could not afford new construction with thick insulation, double-paned windows, or Energy Star appliances. Nationwide, renting families responsible for utilities with incomes less than $15,000 spend an average of $116 a month on utilities; those with incomes in excess of $75,000 spend $151 a month. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index, 2000–2013; American Housing Survey, 2013, Table S-08-R0; Michael Carliner, Reducing Energy Costs in Rental Housing: The Need and the Potential (Cambridge: Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, 2013).
5. We Energies, whose service area extends beyond Milwaukee to other parts of Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, processes roughly 4,000 cases of theft every year. (Personal communication, Brian Manthey, We Energies, July 22, 2014.) See Peter Kelly, “Electricity Theft: A Bigger Issue Than You Think,” Forbes, April 23, 2013; “Using Analytics to Crack Down on Electricity Theft,” CIO Journal, from the Wall Street Journal, December 2, 2013.
6. The moratorium applies to both gas and electric heating sources. The disconnection estimates come from a personal communication with Brian Manthey, We Energies, July 24, 2014. On monthly eviction trends, see Matthew Desmond, “Eviction and the Reproduction of Urban Poverty,” American Journal of Sociology 118 (2012): 88–133, Figure A2.
2. MAKING RENT
1. John Gurda, The Making of Milwaukee, 3rd ed. (Milwaukee: Milwaukee County Historical Society, 2008 [1999]), 421–22; see also 416–18; Sammis White et al., The Changing Milwaukee Industrial Structure, 1979–1988 (Milwaukee: University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Urban Research Center, 1988).
2. William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012 [1987]); Marc Levine, The Crisis Continues: Black Male Joblessness in Milwaukee (Milwaukee: University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Center for Economic Development, 2008).
3. Jason DeParle, American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and the Nation’s Drive to End Welfare (New York: Penguin, 2004), 16, 164–68.
4. State of Wisconsin, Department of Children and Families, Rights and Responsibilities: A Help Guide, 2014, 6.
5. I did not personally witness Lamar’s interaction with his caseworker. This quotation is from Lamar’s account of the conversation. And I did not personally witness the painting scene. It was reconstructed through conversations with Lamar, his sons, and the neighborhood boys.
6. Landlording is one of the last vestiges of family capitalism in America. Rental properties get handed down from fathers to sons, and it is not unusual to meet a second-or even a fourth-generation landlord. See Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties (New York: Collier Books, 1961), chapter 2.
7. A 1960s study found that 8 in 10 rental properties in Newark, New Jersey, were owned by people for whom rent contributed less than three-quarters of their income. George Sternlieb, The Tenement Landlord (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1969).
8. This happened during a time when the entire American labor force grew by only 50 percent. David Thacher, “The Rise of Criminal Background Screening in Rental Housing,” Law and Social Inquiry 33 (2008): 5–30.
9. Author’s calculations based on the Library of Congress call number HD1394 (rental property, real estate management). This idea is indebted to Thacher, “Rise of Criminal Background Screening in Rental Housing.”
10. In 2009, the going rate for a two-bedroom apartment in inner-city Milwaukee was $550, utilities not included. The going rate for a room in a rooming house in the same neighborhood was $400 per room, utilities included. The profit margins of rooming houses often were better. Milwaukee Area Renters Study, 2009–2011.
3. HOT WATER
1. In previous academic publications, I represented the trailer park under a pseudonym. I have used its real name here.
2. Patrick Jones, The Selma of the North: Civil Rights Insurgency in Milwaukee (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 1, 158, 176–77, 185; “Upside Down in Milwaukee,” New York Times, September 13, 1967.
3. On the history of Hispanics in Milwaukee, see John Gurda, The Making of Milwaukee, 3rd ed. (Milwaukee: Milwaukee County Historical Society, 2008 [1999]), 260. On segregation, see John Logan and Brian Stults, The Persistence of Segregation in the Metropolis: New Findings from the 2010 Census (Washington, DC: US Census, 2011); Harrison Jacobs, Andy Kiersz, and Gus Lubin, “The 25 Most Segregated Cities in America,” Business Insider, November 22, 2013.
4. This figure is based on the trailer park’s rent rolls from April to July 2008. (Lenny Lawson allowed me to copy them.) Because these arrears estimates are based on summer month totals, when nonpayment and evictions are highest, they are inflated.
5. I did not personally witness this exchange but reconstructed the details by talking with Jerry, Lenny, and other trailer park residents. The quotation is verbatim in Jerry’s recollection.
6. Later, Tobin would look for a way to evict Phyllis, who paid her rent every month. Lenny suggested giving her an eviction notice for having a dog. Tobin’s lease, with its faded and crowded type pushing forward in all caps over three pages, clearly stipulated: NO DOGS OR FARM ANIMALS ARE ALLOWED. But many residents had pets because Tobin and Lenny told them they could. “I’m kind of looking the other way,” Tobin would say. Lenny was suggesting they deny what was said aloud and point to what they had in writing. The lease also outlawed the consumption of alcohol on trailer park grounds.
4. A BEAUTIFUL COLLECTION
1. Throughout American history, city politicians have attempted to place checks on landlords’ power and improve tenants’ lives by laying down rules—from slum clearance to building code enforcement—as if the underlying problem were not America’s abundance of poverty and lack of affordable housing but disorder and inefficiency. This often brings unanticipated consequences that increase tenants’ hardship. Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, vol. 1, The Growth of Ties of Dependence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 147; Beryl Satter, Family Properties: How the Struggle over Race and Real Estate Transformed Chicago and Urban America (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009), 135–45.