Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

Beaker is livid Larraine moved into his trailer without his permission, but there is nothing he can do about it from his hospital bed after triple-bypass heart surgery. When he does return home, he begrudgingly lets his sister stay. Larraine doesn’t have enough money to share the rent—she already owes Eagle Moving and Storage $375 to retrieve her belongings, an amount which increases by $125 a month—and Beaker won’t share his Meals on Wheels food with her.

Lenny does his best to be a go-between for Tobin with both the residents and DNS inspectors. The difference between being on Lenny’s good side or bad side can be having a place to live or eviction. He wheedles and cajoles the regular DNS inspector who comes by to look for violations, most of which Lenny explains away by saying the trailers—“given” by Tobin to residents—are owned by the people in them. He has a vested interest in things running smoothly: in addition to his free rent and salary, he makes a $100 bonus each month for the first $50,000 in rent collected and another $100 for every $2,000 after that. Lenny has worked at the trailer park for twelve years, and once Bieck Management takes over day-to-day operations, as mandated by Tobin’s agreement with the licensing board, he and Office Susie are fired.