Who is Arleen in Evicted?

Evicted is an ethnographic study of tenants in the low-income housing areas of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Matthew Desmond, a Harvard sociologist, narrates the story of eight families clinging to the edge of low-wage employment.

Arleen Belle is a black, single mother who falls behind on rent. Her landlady, Sherrena Tarver, moves to evict her and her boys, a few days before Christmas. Arleen is left into the coldest Milwaukee winter on record to find her family a new home. In a short period, she rents several squalid apartments, faces evictions, crashes with friends, and is forced to live in shelters.

Through Arlene's story, Desmond provides a ground-level view of evictions, one of the most urgent issues facing America today. Evictions trap America’s poor into a cycle of poverty, ill-health, and instability. Single mothers, like Arleen, are the worst sufferers. They bear the cost of running the house and the responsibility of raising children. They are paid less than men for the same amount of work, and they are often unable to make deals with landlords.

Arleen's story transforms our understanding of the centrality of home and determination in the face of hardships.

Arleen Belle is an African-American woman living on the poverty line and attempting to look after her two sons: five-year-old Jafaris, who struggles with severe asthma, and his older brother Jori.

She moves between a large number of apartments and shelters throughout her life in an effort to keep a roof over her family's heads despite her lack of money. Her welfare check barely covers the cost of the family's rent and utilities bill.

Arleen, who had been renting from a woman named Sherrenna, soon ends up in eviction court yet again. After this, she successfully gets a sublet from Crystal, who is Sherrena's new tenant.

The relationship between Crystal and Arleen quickly turns sour. Arleen (who sometimes gives false names like "Arleen Beal" and "Erleen Belle" to landlords) ultimately loses custody of her children due to her inability to provide a suitable home.

Arleen is just one of many real-life people in Evicted who struggles to keep a roof over their heads. At the start of the book, Arleen is evicted with her two sons from their apartment, after someone broke down the door. Arleen and the kids move from place to place, each rathole as uninhabitable as the last. Although the only apartments she can find are always in such appalling condition, Arleen still needs to spend something like 88% of her welfare check on rent, a problem common to many tenants in the book.

Arleen's already desperate plight is made worse by her own chronic depression as well as her son's disabilities, for which he requires treatment. To make matters worse, Arleen's sister passes away, and she needs to borrow some money from her landlord Sherrena to pay for the funeral. Sherrena expects Arleen to be able to pay her back from money received from the state or from her extended family. Such money isn't forthcoming, and in fact Arleen has her public assistance cut after missing an appointment.

After being evicted, Arleen has three days to find a new place in freezing cold weather. She and her family are forced to move around from place to place, and her son Jori ends up going to five different schools between the 7th and 8th grades. The 90th landlord that Arleen contacts is finally able to offer her a place. But after her son Jori kicks a teacher, Arleen and her family are forced to move out and stay with Trisha, her boyfriend, and his family. After a month and a half of this arrangement, Trisha and the other adults disappear, leading Arleen and her family to go stay with her sister. Arleen is cannot afford to keep her possessions in storage, so she loses them. And as she misses three appointments, her welfare case is closed, leaving her completely destitute.

How does eviction impact Arleen in Evicted?

Eviction affects Arleen physically, mentally, and emotionally.

In his 2016 nonfiction novel Evicted, author Matthew Desmond follows eight families living in poverty in Milwaukee. One of these families consists of a woman named Arleen and her two sons, Jori and Jafaris. The three are evicted from their home because of damage done to their front door from a car that was chasing the boys. From the beginning, Arleen and her sons are victims.

Arleen is affected physically in that she has to move her family immediately into a shelter. Though the family is eventually offered their own place to stay from a social worker who intentionally rents to disadvantaged people, the effects on Arleen aren’t merely physical or inconvenient. They are emotionally and mentally debilitating.

Arleen began to receive benefits from the state for depression. Her son, Jafaris, began acting out. Both boys are struggling in school. Arleen can’t afford medications for herself or the boys. To make matters worse, Arleen’s sister dies, and Arleen has to scrape together funds for the funeral.

After a series of stays in shelters and a short-lived stint in an apartment, Arleen loses all of her possessions that are kept in storage, while her sons continue having problems in school and with the law.

The effects of eviction on Arleen cannot be overstated. The struggle and pain of living in poverty and trying to maintain a family (as well as her own mental health) completely consume her every thought and movement. The overall impression that we the readers have of Arleen is that she is the victim of a completely unfair system and that she is absolutely hopeless to escape it.