Forced Out For many poor Americans, eviction never ends.

Arleen Beale’s latest eviction began with a snowball fight. It was January of 2008, and Milwaukee was experiencing its snowiest winter on record. Arleen’s son Jori and his cousin were cutting up, packing powder tight and taking aim at the passing cars on Arthur Avenue. One jerked to a stop, and a man jumped out, chasing the boys to Arleen’s apartment, where he broke down the door with a few kicks. When the landlord found out about the property damage, she decided to evict. Arleen had been there with her sons—Jori was thirteen, Jafaris five—for eight months.

The day they had to be out was bitterly cold, but Arleen knew what would happen if she waited any longer to leave. Her first eviction had taken place sixteen years earlier, when she was twenty-two; she figured that she had rented twenty houses since turning eighteen. First, the landlord would summon the sheriff, who would arrive with a gun, a team of movers, and a judge’s order saying that her house was no longer hers. Then Arleen would be given two options: “truck” or “curb.” “Truck” meant that her things would be loaded into an eighteen-footer and checked into bonded storage. She could get everything back after paying three hundred and fifty dollars. Arleen didn’t have the money, so she would have opted for “curb,” which meant that the movers would pile everything onto the sidewalk: mattresses; a floor-model television; her copy of “Don’t Be Afraid to Discipline”; a nice glass dining table and a lace tablecloth; the meat in the freezer.

READ MORE:http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/08/forced-out