Not to bring anyone down, but a surprising, ironic trend is developing in the very sad area of homelessness in California, in which the homeless are hired to deliver eviction notices in order to survive.
We found this think piece very Speak to Dave worthy and hope one day to be past the devastating reality of far too many unhoused Americans.
Kim Hansen and John Hebbring, who live in a homeless camp in Oakland, Calif., try to make money where they can, including by serving eviction notices | Credit: Jim Wilson/The New York Times
By Thomas Fuller | Feb. 11, 2020
SAN FRANCISCO — After two months of missed rent, it was the knock on the door that the family had been dreading. Eviction brought the prospect of homelessness after months of living on the brink.
But little did they know that the man handing over the eviction documents, John Hebbring, was homeless himself.
“Believe me, we see the irony,” said Mr. Hebbring, whose job it is to deliver eviction notices with his girlfriend, Kim Hansen. Together they live in a 50-year-old trailer infested by rats.
The couple’s predicament offers a measure of how far-reaching the homelessness crisis has become in California. The evicted are doing the evicting.
It is not their job to change locks or physically remove people from their homes — that is the sheriff’s domain — but several times a week Mr. Hebbring and Ms. Hansen leave the crowded, trash-filled, homeless encampment in Oakland where they live and travel to cities around the Bay Area: Newark, Millbrae, Fremont, Daly City, East Palo Alto and Hayward among them.
They go mainly by public transport, with a stack of documents. In some cases, they can post the notices on doors. In others, they are required to put them directly into the recipients’ hands.
“I’m sympathetic to their situation because I know what mine is,” Ms. Hansen said, bundled up on a rainy and cold winter night outside their trailer. “Look at us. I’m out here sick and homeless.”
Ms. Hansen says that despite the couple’s misgivings about delivering eviction notices, their options are limited.
“No one wants to be the one delivering bad news but pretty much right now it’s our only source of income,” she said.
Mr. Hebbring left an eviction notice at an apartment where the tenant owed $270 in rent. Credit: Jim Wilson/The New York Times
They have earned around $1,600 since they started the work in September, only enough to pay for food and, if they have money left, gas for their sputtering generator.
Homelessness in California has reached record levels; the governor has all but declared an emergency over the issue and is requisitioning shuttered hospitals and fairgrounds to shelter the more than 150,000 homeless people, two-thirds of whom are living on the streets.
Ms. Hansen’s and Mr. Hebbring’s trailer is in a homeless encampment profiled by The New York Times in December that the authorities are in the process of dismantling, one of more than 100 camps across Oakland.
Like many of their neighbors, the couple scratch around for ways to make money — working and being homeless is a growing reality across the nation. He sometimes fixes cars. She pokes around for odd jobs. Focus groups, medical trials. “We went on a treadmill for 15 minutes and wore a watch on our wrist. Got $165 per person,” Ms. Hansen said, detailing one of the more lucrative ones. She came across the eviction process server gig on Craigslist.
““I almost want to tell them, ‘If you get kicked out, I’ve got a spot right here next to me.’””
Evictions brought on by rising rents have helped reshape the demographics of Northern California. The wealthy have concentrated in the bull’s-eye of the Bay Area — in and around San Francisco — and those who cannot afford the rent have shifted to the outer rings, to towns further and further away.
There is no reliable eviction data in California because most records are sealed, according to Carolyn Gold, director of litigation and policy at the Eviction Defense Collaborative, a nonprofit organization. She estimates that there are around 3,000 evictions a year in San Francisco alone based on the number of cases in court calendars.
The couple have been living at a homeless camp in Oakland. Credit: Jim Wilson/The New York Times
A generator and a tangle of wires provide electricity at the camp. Credit: Jim Wilson/The New York Times
“No one wants to be the one delivering bad news but pretty much right now it’s our only source of income,” Ms. Hansen said. Credit: Jim Wilson/The New York Times
But even that estimate does not fully capture the dynamics of the affordability crisis, says Leah Simon-Weisberg, one of the leading tenant attorneys in the Bay Area.
“At some point people are involuntarily pushed out from where they are living, whether it is through the legal process or not,” she said.
Annual surveys carried out by cities try to quantify how people become homeless. The leading causes in San Francisco in 2019 were losing a job (26 percent), alcohol or drug use (18 percent), eviction (13 percent), arguments among family or friends (12 percent), mental health problems (8 percent), and divorce or breakup (5 percent), according to city data.
But for Mr. Hebbring and Ms. Hansen — and many other people without homes across the country — those categories tend to blend together.
For Ms. Hansen it was the combination of a fractured family, a mother who got hooked on methamphetamines and natural disasters: Twice Ms. Hansen had her home burn in wildfires.
For Mr. Hebbring it was repeated encounters with the criminal justice system — both he and his father went to prison for selling drugs at separate times — and the sudden death of his wife eight years ago that forced his eviction from their home.
I met with Mr. Hebbring and Ms. Hansen a dozen times over the past four months and followed them on their eviction document deliveries. In a soaking rain we walked to a FedEx shop in Oakland where the store manager downloaded and printed the documents for $1.37.
Since they accepted their first freelance gig for the legal services company in September, Mr. Hebbring and Ms. Hansen have delivered dozens of documents. Ms. Hansen maps the locations on her phone before they head out.
“What a way to get to know my way around,” she joked.
The couple often take public transportation as they serve eviction notices across the Bay Area. Credit: Jim Wilson/The New York Times