A Rental Named Desire - International Business Times

The beginning of the end of Desi Grimes’ life in a New Orleans subdivision started with running the washing machine one night. Desi owned the washing machine, but she rented, with the aid of a housing voucher, the beige-brick home with green shutters and a tall magnolia tree anchored to a corner lot on the West Bank of New Orleans. She had already lived in six other rental homes since she returned to New Orleans in 2008, three years after Hurricane Katrina hit. Each rental came with a deal breaker: rats in the house, or a foreclosure secretly in the works, or industrious termites boring through a wall between the kitchen and the garage. Even so, the landlords usually found a way to keep Desi's security deposits, costing her about $5,000 over the years, she estimates. A 34-year-old African-American, she earns $32,000 a year as a receptionist at a legal aid organization downtown. There, a constant stream of clients facing evictions, worried about losing their housing vouchers and squaring off against slumlords evokes the precariousness of her own position. Last year, between rentals, she had to go live at her grandmother’s house on one side of the Mississippi River, while her children stayed with their grandmother on the other side. Source: www.ibtimes.com