Summary Of Nobody Wants The North Side

Chapter twenty is titled “Nobody Wants the North Side” which depicts the struggles of Crystal and Vanetta. The two women are staying temporarily in a shelter after being evicted from their previous housing situation due to lack of payment on their bills. The chapter highlights their friendship and how they team up to tackle their issue of finding new housing. Together they decide to find new housing to get out of the shelter and in a new part of town because they are unhappy with their current situation. The title of the chapter comes from their search for housing and they avoided looking in the north side of Milwaukee because of the belief that the white neighborhoods in this area would discriminate against them and not provide housing opportunities

I saw how these two women were struggling to find affordable housing, that was also safe to live in for themselves, and the children involved. The stories from people such as Crystal and Vanetta helped me understand evictions from the insider perspective of the renter, as opposed to the external situation when I have seen an eviction notice on someone’s door and made conclusions on my own. From my new perspective, I saw that evictions are not always at the fault of the renter. I was shown that there are unforeseen circumstances that can lead to people, like Vanetta, to commit crimes just to prevent getting evicted. Since Vanetta has a criminal record now and a history, she was faced with a very complicated amount of setbacks that would harm her chances of renting affordable and safe places to live. Seeing her struggle from this perspective showed me how much power the landlords truly have. If a landlord evicts someone, for whatever reason, this hurts their chances of being able to rent again for the rest of their lives. This is a tremendous amount of power placed in a small amount of people’s hands and highlights the powerlessness of renters overall. As Crystal and Vanetta were applying for apartments, they came across an agency that had a strict set of pre qualifications for renters to meet, including no history of evictions and no criminal records. They did not meet these qualifications, but valued that the

There tends to be a cultural stigma that frames people that are evicted as being lazy and irresponsible, and ultimately bad people. People that are in these situations do not always carry these characteristics with them, people like Crystal. Through her narratives you see that she is an extremely good person that is in an unfortunate situation. One moment that showed me how much of a compassionate woman that she is, is illustrated by Desmond on page 254, “Crystal watched the boy dash across the street. ‘I wish I had me a house. I would take him in.’”. When I read this it took me a little while to truly understand how deep the situation was. Here was a woman facing a housing and economic crisis, just trying to survive and all she wanted to do in that moment was help this young boy in need of a better life. She wanted to help this young boy before helping herself, even though they were both in rough situations in life. This line really stuck with me and made the final point to me, it showed me that many people are extremely selfless in order to help others, even when they are dealing with bigger issues surrounding them, because it is a morally good thing to