Issue of Morality and Landlords
Throughout
the stories of each of the peoples' lives in the book "Evicted", the
issue of providing housing to families with children is completely baffling to
me. As a single Dad myself, I can't wrap my head around not being able to
provide a home for my daughter. Arleen and Pam are two of the main people who
are followed throughout the book, who both have multiple children and are
unable to provide for them a decent place to sleep, a regular diet or a stable
life.
This is mainly resulting from the lack of ability to find homes from landlords who refuse to rent to families and mothers with children, especially more than one child. Throughout the struggle of finding a home, Arleen and Pam both have to make the judgement to lie about having kids and saying that they only have one child to try to fool the landlord in renting to them without the worry of having loud disturbances or child-conducted damage to the home. One excerpt from the book shows how hard Arleen must try to display her family to more than 80 possible landlords to get them to rent to her:
This is mainly resulting from the lack of ability to find homes from landlords who refuse to rent to families and mothers with children, especially more than one child. Throughout the struggle of finding a home, Arleen and Pam both have to make the judgement to lie about having kids and saying that they only have one child to try to fool the landlord in renting to them without the worry of having loud disturbances or child-conducted damage to the home. One excerpt from the book shows how hard Arleen must try to display her family to more than 80 possible landlords to get them to rent to her:
“When Number 85 answered the phone, Arleen replied, “Hi! How you doing?” instead of “Hi, how you doing?” or “Hi, I’m calling about your property.” She had been trying different pitches and bending her voice in different directions. She would tell one landlord one thing and another something else. Sometimes she was in a shelter; sometimes she wasn’t. Sometimes she had two children; sometimes one. Sometimes they were in child care; sometimes they weren’t. Sometimes she received child support; sometimes she didn’t. She was grasping, experimenting, trying out altered stories at random. Arleen wouldn’t know how to game the system if she wanted to. (232)”
The stories of Arleen and Pam both hit home with me because
of the impossibility to put myself in their shoes. I would be devastated if put
in their position to be that desperate to put my child in a home with a bed to
sleep on, being able to send them to a school for longer than a couple months
or even at all. There needs to be reform further than a government ordinance or
bill that makes discriminating against families more of a reality. There is a
question of morality over money that needs to be addressed in our country
because the idea of refusing a child a home is disgusting and atrocious.