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American Heritage: Evictions
Six years ago yesterday, when I arrived at the Heritage House Apartments after work, it looked like the building was being turned inside out. Garbage and people’s belongings lay all around the foundation where they had been dropped out the windows onto the ground below.
Pickup trucks were backed up to every entrance to the building and men, women, and children were hauling plastic laundry baskets packed with radios, stuffed animals, food, and clothing out the doors. As I pulled in, three elderly folks in motorized wheelchairs rode off across the parking lot with gas cans to refill a car — the Buick LeSabre appeared to be packed with their belongings but unmoveable. An elderly gentleman told me his wife was disabled, and that they hoped to find a place to move that night. He was calling all their family and everyone he knew at church. It was already 8:30 PM.
Heritage House was an old hotel-turned condo/apartment complex on the east side of my town. Some people owned the units they lived in, but many more were units owned by out-of-state or even out-of-country landlords who rented the apartments to low-income families. A number of the units were Section 8, meaning that folks paid a percentage of their income towards the rent and the government program made up the rest. Some of these Section 8 landlords were charging three times what I pay for my house for these tiny…
