July 2003

Yes, Sadly I'm Still Here

A woman I don't know called me the other day and told me she'd been wrongfully evicted. She explained what happened - that she got rent papers from court but she hadn't noticed the area on top of the court summons that told her the date and time for the hearing. She explained that she'd just talked to her landlord the day before about payment arrangements and then she came home to find that her key didn't work and her things were all gone. A notice informed her that she'd been evicted.

Since she was very good at telling her story, I listened patiently. To confirm the important details, I asked just a few questions along the way. In the end, I had to sadly inform her that the law in Maryland doesn't consider her eviction to have been wrongful. The only notice she received was the court summons with a 2"x2" box in the corner containing the critical details of date, time, and case number. She came home from work to find that she no longer had a home. And this was all because she didn't look closely enough at the court form. She thought that missing only one rent payment should have been a cause for collection, not eviction. She found out that she was wrong.

When I hung up the phone, I wanted to cry. The trauma of being evicted is bad enough when you know it's coming, but to think that you're coming home at the end of a long day and find instead that you need to find emergency shelters...well it's just unthinkable. At the end of some calls, my job is to tell people that the unthinkable is true and that they are all out of time and options. And then I pick up the phone again.

I really don't know why I let myself continue being a hotline counselor. I hear some many horrible stories that I'm immune to most of them. Callers frequently explain a problem that they think should be shocking and when I fail to gasp audibly in horror they'll ask "Are you still there?" "Yes, sadly I'm still here," I want to say. No, I'm not shocked that your apartment has a few roaches. No, I'm not shocked that your landlord says you'll still owe rent despite your recent unemployment. No, I'm not going to sympathize with you over how long it takes to get someone evicted or, on the other hand, about how short a timeline your landlord can give to ask you to leave. But sometimes a caller gets through with a truly sad story and reminds me that they're not just callers, they're people. And I want to cry.

Others are easy to keep in the "not people" category. They're obnoxious, self-righteous, and demanding. At least one caller a day exclaims, "So, you're telling me I have NO rights?" Others say, "This is bullshit." They refuse to answer critical questions and call back wondering why they didn't get the right information. They go off on tangents about Jesus protecting them from their impending crisis, or they spew a litany of problems from years past before getting to the point of the call. And I keep picking up the phone. I must be crazy.

Working on a hotline is like working on a chaos assembly line. The lines keep lighting up with more calls to handle. Some are easy; some are so bad I put that phone on mute and curse them out; others make me wonder about humanity. And as the calls pile up waiting for me to answer, my blood fills with dread because I can't discern who is the nightmare caller until I pick up the phone.