low-income African Americans.

Because of the nature of real estate in the city of Milwaukee, Sherrena realizes she can make a substantial amount of money renting to impoverished African-Americans, charging exorbitant rates for sub-par housing because the individuals have no other options. Since many of the nicer rental facilities will not accept individuals with criminal histories or low credit scores, Sherrena and renters like her essentially can set prices however they want and don't need to maintain their housing.

Sherrena is like many of the other property managers in the area who make a large profit from the misfortune of their tenants. Because she makes more money from low-quality apartments, she is earning a hefty sum for every renter that she keeps in squalor. She evicts many of her tenants, including Lamar, Arlene, Patrice, Doreen, and Crystal. While she does show some care for those renting from her, in the end she treats the situation as strictly business and doesn't appear to lose any sleep over the evictions.

Published in 2016 and written by American sociologist Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City is a work of non-fiction about landlords and tenants in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Sherrena Tarver is one of the African American landlords that Matthew Desmond profiles in the book. A former schoolteacher, she originally started a daycare business before realizing she could make more money as a property landlord. Sherrena owns a number of properties on the North Side of Milwaukee, a run-down and principally black neighborhood where white people don’t tend to buy.

Due to the lack of affordable housing, she is able to rent out inferior properties to desperate people who would otherwise be homeless. Safe in the knowledge that she has a steady stream of potential tenants waiting for homes, she is also able to be an uncompromising landlord, and she does not think twice about evicting existing tenants if needed. Sherrena works hard, is very ambitious and, as her property portfolio grows, her husband, Quentin, leaves his job as a police officer to become her property manager. Due to her success, she and Quentin are able to live in the wealthier part of the city and travel for pleasure regularly.

Sherrena is one of the book's main characters. She's an African American woman who makes a good living as a professional landlord. Sherrena owns a string of properties in the run-down black neighborhoods of Milwaukee which she rents out to hard-pressed tenants who have literally nowhere else to go. The chronic lack of affordable housing in the city means that landlords like Sherrena can make a lot of money out of letting sub-standard properties in rough areas where no one would choose to live.

The structural imbalance of the broken housing market gives landlords like Sherrena the whip hand over their tenants. As she can always count on a steady stream of potential clients desperate for a roof over their heads, Sherrena can afford to evict her existing tenants at the drop of a hat, safe in the knowledge that she won't be out of pocket. It's through the character of Sherrena that Matthew Desmond makes one of his key points: the fundamentally broken housing system actually incentivizes evictions and poor housing maintenance. It doesn't matter how dilapidated Sherrena's properties are or how dangerous the surrounding neighborhoods may be; she is guaranteed to make substantial sums of money as a landlord. As Sherrena puts it herself, when trying to encourage white landlords to invest in black neighborhoods: "The 'hood is good."

Sherrena is the ambitious landlord in Evicted. She met her husband, Quentin Tarver, when he pulled her over at a traffic stop. She started off as a schoolteacher but left that job to start a daycare. That did not pan out the way she had planned, so she began buying cheap properties with high rents and found that she was able to make a lot of money that way. She was making so much that her husband quit his job to become her property manager.

As Sherrena continues to make money, she also decides to start rounding out her income by helping her tenants with other professional things—for a fee. She is a very ambitious businesswoman who is always looking for new ways to expand.

Sherrena Tarver is the landlord of several of the individuals in Evicted, including Matthew Desmond, the author. Sherrena was originally a teacher, and she met her husband, Quentin Tarver, when he pulled her over at a traffic stop. After several years together, Sherrena was feeling dissatisfied with her job and attempted to start a daycare business. When her daycare venture failed, Sherrena set her sights on real estate and began purchasing run-down properties in urban Milwaukee. Sherrena quickly discovered that she could make a lot of money renting to poor black individuals. Apartments in the run-down inner city can often be rented at the same rates as properties in nicer areas. However, inner-city apartments do not have to be well maintained, because prospective tenants are poor and desperate for any type of housing. In fact, many poor or black individuals are completely shut out from nicer neighborhoods, where buildings often reject individuals with past evictions or criminal records. Sherrena’s real estate business quickly grew, and she began to manage multiple properties. Her husband, Quentin, eventually left his job as a police officer to become a property manager in their new buildings. Sherrena is not wholly uncaring, but it is impossible to ignore the fact that she profits from the misfortune of her tenants. Ultimately, Sherrena evicts Lamar, Arleen, Patrice, Doreen, and Crystal.