Devonderick & Christine

D: My name is Devonderick Johnson. People know me as Munch. I was born and raised in Gainesville, Florida. Raised in the Woodland Parks community, also known as Sugarhill. I do a lot of different things within the city and in the community. I really don't wanna get too deep into it, but that's pretty much it.

C: My name is Christine Johnson. I was born in Gainesville, Florida but raised in Palatka, Florida, and moved back to Gainesville when I was two or three I think? Right now, I am trying to break through as a business owner myself. With Talya'Marie, which is my clothing line and I've just ventured off into doing tutus for little girls' birthday parties. And they're not regular tutus, they snap. So it's putting my own little spin on it. But other than that, I identify as a mother and a wife. And I take my roles very seriously, and I love them.

D: I forgot all about that part.

C: It's all right boo, I got you! [Laughter]

D: Ah! [Laughter] It was a trip. Anything could happen, pretty much. You'd expect the unexpected. Like, literally. You got your good days, you got your bad days. Your good days could be as much as, "Hey, I found a twenty in my pocket!" Or the whole day's going great. The bad days could get to, "Damn, I lost my keys," to "Somebody died today." So it kept you on your toes. You build up a callus from it. Certain times, it's just everyday life. All in all, we make the best of it. The conditions—uh, pretty bad. Like one of the communities was infested with rats, and they did nothing about it for years, until—and it was old, it was rickety. Until finally it burnt down and then everybody was just forced to move on that. So you've got a bunch of people, hundreds of people in this community, now have to just scatter at random. Not knowing what they're gonna do the next day. And then, being on the streets in this side of town, it's pretty rough.

D: It was Kennedy Homes community. I mean, it was—

C: It was on the news.

D: Yeah, it was on the news. It was pretty bad conditions. The property itself was just old and rickety and pretty much needed to come down, but they just kept renting it. And people needed places to go, so what else could they do? Like I said, people made the best of it. Still got good people raised in that community. Still got good things came out of it. You've got your bad things, of course, but you hold onto the good and you take the good with you. But, yeah. A lot of conditions of a lot of the communities were terrible, but it was also looked at as in the residents of the community are responsible for those conditions. So nothing was ever even done about it or just not even give it a second thought.

C: Yes. So, I grew up differently than my husband. He always called me rich. [Laughter] In his eyes, I was always rich. Rich in love, rich in money, rich in opportunities. He always called me rich. So, my mom was big in the community. She was a dance teacher, a choreographer. She started off a group called Black Pearls and it skyrocketed. Everybody. We had many groups out of this one group. It was crazy. You see ‘Bring It,’ my mom was ‘Bring it.’ So it was like everybody loved my mom. It was like a full house. You ever see the meme with all the kids on the floor and it's like "when your cousins come to stay?" That's every day at Natalia Drayton's house. You're walking over seas of people just to use the bathroom. It's crazy. My mom loved kids. She's even adopted half of the kids that joined, and—

D: Yeah. If you came there more than twice, you were family.

C: You were family. You were there. You were there. And she would try to teach you how to dance. She will. [Laughter] She will.

D: No matter who you are.

C: No matter who you are, you're here, you're finna learn this routine. [Laughter] So, yes. She loved everyone. And that's pretty much where my love comes from. Her and my father been together for years. They had their ups and downs, we've had—us being children, we never saw it, we never understood it. But as I've grown, when she passed, I saw it. I experienced it. I moved from five different households in a year. But he stood by me through it all. It was hard, but I managed.

C: I feel like it called to us because it needs us. And when my mom did—her dance group, it was in East Gainesville. We were over here. Even though we were pushed back to Newman's Lake, that's where we lived, we still were here. She ventured everywhere, but this is where she stayed. We stayed on Fifth Avenue. We stayed right here in this little—it's a little house next to a barber shop off Waldo Road. We stayed right here in the little duplex that was sitting over there, we stayed over here. Like, we stayed in this area, everywhere we moved. So I feel home here. This is my home. So, yeah.

Before owning a home, did you ever have to move because of outside forces?

D: Not to the full extent where we received a letter on our door saying, "Hey, get out." We've had our close friends that actually happened to. Everyone received a letter. "Hey. By this time no one's lease will be renewed and we're just clearing off the property." So, move, pretty much.

C: We're gonna give you this certain amount of money for you to leave.

D: Yeah. A close friend of ours got that kind of letter on her door.

C: My cousin was a part of that, as well.

D: But the community we actually just left, they're actually—from what I'm hearing—they're invoking a policy that they're actually going through renovations. So, people are receiving letters. "Hey, come such and such we won't be renewing certain people's leases and other things like that."

D: I can't remember the specific community, but—what was the name of the community where what's her name lived, where she had—

C: It's over there by the China house on Southwest... I forgot the name.

D: 13th. It's on 13th Street.

C: It was like, right in between the China house and the gas station where Steak 'n' Shake is. That community in the back, yes. I can't think of the name of it. But, yes, it's gone. Everybody had to leave.

D: What was the community on Fifth Avenue?

C: Seminary Lane.

D: Seminary Lane. Those are gone. Completely. Kennedy Homes is on—that burnt down. That was actually the second time it burnt down.

C: That they finna build Heartland. [Heartwood]

D: And the second fire actually started in the apartment I was in. I was staying with one of my friends and his family for a little bit. And we were all in the living room, asleep. So I'm guessing there was a spark that came from the outlet where the air conditioning was plugged in. And my friend was asleep on the couch, and he said he woke up and the couch was on fire. And he woke all of us up, and we had to get everybody out or whatever. And a couple of the neighbors was knocking on doors, getting everybody out before it burnt down and stuff like that. So, yeah, it was crazy.

D: It was devastating to a lot of people. Because, one, that was their homes. And two, a lot of people don't have extended family, either at all or that they can actually call on, cause a lot of them in the same situation. We don't have space either. We only have what we have. So, a lot of us were just out there in the cold, we're just looking at each other. We don't know what the hell to do. Luckily, I called my grandma; she came and got me. Got me some clothes the next day or whatever. And then I came back and everybody was still out there in the morning. Red Cross was trying to help. It was a couple of the police and the fire—you know. Really, people were devastated. They didn't know what to do. And this is maybe like two in the morning. So, you wake up, fire. Everything is gone. Now what?

D: I really don't know the process. Like I said, my grandma came and got me, actually, when that happened. I was up under her and she took me to Phoenix, where she lived at the time. Trying to help me to get my stuff together. Only thing I remember from the process was coming back, talking to the Red Cross. They gave me a debit card with like two hundred dollars on it. But a close friend of mine—from what I remember him telling me, it was hell. They have to put everybody in this hotel for, like, months. And when everybody finally got vouchers or whatever to move into a new place, that hotel had to be torn down. Or either they felt like that, so I don't know why. But from what he's telling me, it was a crazy process. So I don't really know the full details to it, but it was pretty damn bad. Yeah.

C: As of right now, we don't really know if we are getting fruits and vegetables. We know for sure that the plans are going to be similar to a grocery store. We were gonna receive fruits and vegetables, but now they're debating. Pretty much they're in the middle of a debate. My plan was to try to come up with a proposal of buying locally, and trying to increase the community—like, feed and pretty much keep the money in the community. Exactly. I'm just trying to find ways to keep the money in the community. And my dad, he just had a stroke and he made the most sense to us the other day. He's like, "We should buy the lot next door and you should rent-to-own it." Like, have him rent-to-own it. That way we can circulate money from each other. And I was like, "That is so powerful." Because that keeps money in not only my pocket, but his as well. So it's crazy. Ownership is awesome. I'm sorry y'all. But as far as Dollar General, I'm not fully sure about the whole fruits and vegetable thing at the moment.

C: Okay, so with rent-to-own, you're pretty much paying someone to stay somewhere. But the price is set at, I'm guessing—hold on, let me describe. So if I buy the lot for $3500, I can rent it to my dad for, say, $150 a month until he pays off the $3500. You know, something like that. That way, he won't have to go to someone else for a two-bedroom or a one-bedroom and have to pay six, seven, eight hundred dollars for him to just survive. To live. I feel like that is something that you don't own and you have to pay that much money for something that you don't own. Like, I'm just giving away my money to you, for you to do what? Not come and fix my plumbing when I need it? Not come and fix my AC when I need it? Call pest control? We lived in Tiger Bay and they let the trash pile up for months.

D: Yeah. That was crazy. They were going through new owners.

C: Not only did Thanksgiving pass by, Christmas and New Year's pass by, and trash was flooded inside the street. We gotta swerve and pass each other. You want me to pay you eight hundred a month for you to do what? What are you doing? I'm not understanding that. So I would rather own my own. So now what I can do is, I can find pest control for seventy-nine dollars a month and I can put myself on a plan to do such-and-such, or I can find a plumber for a certain amount of money. And I can set up something and do it monthly or something like that, and I can just continuously do that. That's because it's mine and I don't have to overcharge myself, or overcharge whoever else, or wait for somebody to make empty promises.

D: And then never show up.

D: They were pretty much going through new owners at the time. A lot of these places don't keep the same owners, for maybe a year or two or whatever. So I guess they were still in the process of selling the place, and the last owner didn't pay for the services to be continued. The trash to be picked up, pest control to come out, basic stuff like that. So the trash pretty much piled and filled the streets almost, from Thanksgiving, Christmas, to New Year's. When the new owners take over, a lot of people got a roach infestation.

C: And ended up getting evicted.

D: Yeah. And then they ended up evicting those people for those roach infestations.

C: It was pretty much upsetting because not only did the trash pile up, I still had to pay rent. If I didn't pay my rent, I can get kicked out.

D: Yeah. The not getting fixed thing is normal. The thing is that you can't refuse to withhold your rent if they don't fix something. You pretty much have to pay your rent, otherwise they evict you regardless. So, your complaints means nothing if you don't have their rent. And then they'll deal with it on their own time.

D: Yeah. Yeah, of course.

C: Yeah, it was. It really was. My friends don't mind, because they're like, "We love you, regardless of your surroundings." But at the same time, this is where I have to live.

D: Yeah. Some of them have been through it themselves. You know, growing up in the same communities or whatever. Cause all you can do is better for yourself.

C: Right. So it's just like, why do I have to live like this if I'm paying you $825 for a said rent, and then it's crazy because they offer you Section 8 to help you out. But at the same time, if you're married, and you both have an income—or something like he's the head of household because he's working—type of situation, they tell you, "Oh, we'll only pay a hundred dollars of your rent and you pay the rest." So now not only am I getting a hundred dollars knocked off my rent, I'm still paying rent for stuff that's not getting done. So it's like, what's the help? I might as well do this myself.

D: We don't really know anything about the churches personally or in detail. We're not really a religious family, so we don't really subscribe to that. Only church by name I really know over here is Mount Carmel, and that's cause it's the biggest. But, yeah, there are like fifteen of them just in this area alone. We actually live next door to one. We've been here for like seven months almost, and that church has only been used twice. Yeah. We may see someone go in it every once in a while, but a constant service? No.

C: They have some abandoned churches over here that don't have a home. I'm just confused on why you have so many churches right across from each other.

D: Literally across from each other. Literally next door to each other.

C: Yes, like you have one here, one there, and one there. It's like if we all worshipping the same God, why do we have to compete?

D: Yeah. We all going for the same goal, then why is everybody stockpiling their churches in this one area? It just don't make sense. I don't know. Because, like I said, I don't know anybody from those churches. If I saw one of them on the street, I couldn't point them out or whatever. We've lived in this community, this area specifically, on and off for a few years. And we couldn't point out anybody who works at these churches or ministered at these churches. We know they're there. We know they're there. We don't know what they do or why they're there. There's one church that they do stuff where they give away food and maybe free clothes and stuff like that, sometimes. But it's not really, you know, pristine stuff. It's like maybe the shelf life is going bad on it so we're giving it to the community. I think it's pretty much just a tax write-off, cause they still get everybody's name and address and phone number, proving who they gave it to. So you need that for a reason. We're just not sure why there's so many churches, what they're doing here, and this church needs so much God apparently. But the conditions haven't changed since we were little. So we may see a few cosmetic differences but it doesn't impact the people, at all. And while the communities are staying the same, the churches seem to be changing a little bit. There's one that just got modified. Whoever owns the church—apparently they park their Bentley in the back of it for a few weeks. And across from houses that aren't in the best conditions and people who are sleeping in the streets, and so on and so forth. Across the street from a school that the City is still trying to shut down at this moment. So, where are the churches? We don't know.

C: But they do have a swimming pool at Mount Carmel for their members.

D: Yeah. Mount Carmel just built a gym and other things like that. And they'll build things that are beneficial to some, but it's mostly just their members. If you're not a member of a church, you don't access that on a daily basis.

D: Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. And the only real changes we're seeing in the community are the churches. Only the big, functioning ones that have service every week or so. And they'll say they're helping, but we don't really see what they're doing. And usually they're the main ones telling us, "Oh, we need God. And the material things you worship are nothing." Yet the material things you have are getting nicer and nicer by the day. And then all these people are coming, paying their tithes and offering, giving their donations to the church weekly. But if these same people came to you and say, "Hey. Something's about to get ruined in my life. This could fix it." All you're gonna tell me to do is pray.

C: Or pay your tithes.

D: Yeah. And make sure you pay your tithes. There's actually churches that aren't burying people because they didn't pay enough tithes or whatever. It was this one story on the news that said this woman fell ill, said her mother fell ill for like two or three weeks. She was hospitalized for the entire two or three weeks. She ended up dying. She went back to the church that she went to faithfully every week. Paid her tithes faithfully every week to the church. They refused to bury her, because within that time she was hospitalized, she did not pay tithes. And the pastor himself, on camera, said, "Well she could've at least had someone bring tithes on her behalf to keep her membership intact." And it's just, I see a lot of giving to the church. I don't see a lot of churches giving back. Is basically what I'm saying. And don't get me wrong, they're not obligated to go full out and just save the community. But at the same time, you push on the community that "This is what you need. Only this can help you what you're going through. Only this can save you." But this is not where you can get the help from.

D: Maybe a couple of them live in the community? But like I said, we don't know anybody per say who does live in the community that operates these churches. So I'm pretty sure they don't live in these communities. Even the cars they drive, we only see those certain cars when they're at the churches. So we don't know these people. I'm pretty sure a few of them do. I'm pretty sure a few of them go to the churches or whatever, that live somewhere in this community. I just don't know them personally. And we haven't seen any changes. We haven't seen what God has done for this community. So, still waiting, cause there's a lot of God over here, but you can always find a bad community by the ones that have the most churches.

D: Don't know much about politics. Only real politics or politicians that even involved with Gainesville I know about is Rodney Long and yourself, Ty Loudd. We've been helping you in the community, trying to get people to vote. Trying to get people to believe they have a voice or whatnot. Like I said, really I don't know much about it. I don't know many of them, I haven't seen anyone. Really, other than... haven't even seen Goston in these communities. I've heard about him. But my only real time physically seeing him was—

C: On the billboards.

D: Was a couple of years ago. And a billboard every now and then. But you don't pay attention to those when you're driving by. Just some dude on a sign or whatever. But I only physically seen him maybe a couple of years ago. So I don't really, I don't know what to—

C: I think politics on this side is being ignored. I feel like it's one-sided. I feel like if you're not a part of that then you're not a part of anything on their agenda.

D: And that's everything.

C: Yeah, and that's everything down from schools, school programs, food, down to housing, down to jobs. [Laughter] Schools. They make it so hard. I don't understand. Why do we need so—you give us everything except for food. You give us—

D: Everything but what we need.

C: Thank you! You give us everything else. Like, "Oh, here's something that will shut you up. A park." Ta-dah! I'm starving. [Laughter] I can't eat this tire, this little tire swing thing that you just built. I don't even know what this thing does. What is this? How do I use that? You see things on the playground that you look at and be like, "So, do I put my leg here?" [Laughter] I don't understand. Why do we have these things, and we don't even have a grocery store? We don't have anybody training people to get into the job industry. We don't even have people to talk to us. Even try to come up with a plan for us. I just don't understand. I know what's happening, I just don't understand why it's happening.

C: I have people who stand out in front of the store and ask other people to buy them food, I have people who come in the store and ask us, can we warm up said food in our microwave. I have people who come in and get the stuff off the dollar shelf, because they only have dollars to their name. I have people who come in and ask random questions like, "Do you guys sell onions?" And you're like, "We don't sell fruit and vegetables here." [Laughter] We don't sell that type of stuff. “You guys sell oranges?” Like, we actually have people that do this. And this is like an everyday, constant thing. If it's not a phone call, it's in person. And this is what we see every day we walk through those doors. Every day. And it shouldn't be like that. These people have a whole place set up called 'Tent City' for them to go. And it's just like, you have so many abandoned buildings. So many abandoned churches that's big enough to put a couple of beds in. Have another Saint Francis. Even with Saint Francis, you have to be in by a certain time, but you also have to be out by a certain time. So it's crazy with the Saint Francis house situation. I understand you want everybody to be out, looking for a job, but if you're Saint Francis house providing beds, you should also be able to provide that training. Like, come on. We're not just here to—"Oh, you have some rest and you can have at it again tomorrow." What are you doing to help me? You're not doing nothing but help me sleep and go. Now I'm standing across the street drinking, from Saint Francis House, because I don't have anywhere to go. I don't have anything to do.

D: A lot of, I'm just waiting for them to open back up so they can claim their spot. So they won't have to sleep in the streets.

C: Right. Cause it's a first come, first served thing.

D: And if you're not there before the doors close, a lot of them just sleep in front of the building.

D: A community center like the Boys and Girls Club. Boys and Girls Club is actually a big help to communities like these or whatever. I went to a Boys and Girls Club when I was younger. It kept us busy, it kept us out of trouble. We had people there actually tutoring us. People actually tutoring us. So they had sports programs, we did activities and things like that. We went on field trips. Not only that, but there were people who looked like us there. So we felt comfortable. There was somebody who actually knew what we were going through. And knew how to actually talk to us and handle us. We had that person that we knew could come to us. "Hey. I know what's going on, but I need you to focus. Get back to it. Okay? All right." So we had somebody to actually talk to us, like a big brother. We didn't have a Big Brothers Big Sisters program in these communities, so the Boys and Girls Club was the next best thing. We can go there and get somebody to help us with our homework. We could go there and talk to somebody when we were frustrated or whatever. And also they gave us other outlets, like activities and sports and things like that. I played for a football team when I was going to the Boys and Girls Club. That did a lot for the people in the community. A lot of them grew up and played college sports. And a couple of those went off to the NFL and did their thing. So the kids—especially nowadays, they need an outlet. They need something that they can do that will keep them on the right path. Other than that...

C: We need a training center where they train—like, trades. Like Job Corps or something like that.

D: Something that actually—we also need more companies to come to this side of town and establish jobs. If not, we need more young people, more entrepreneurs, to take more risks and try to start a business on this side of town. Because little do they know, this side of town needs a lot of stuff. And if this is there, we're gonna come to it. Because a lot of the times, the places we spend our money, it's our only option. So, and like she said, a lot of people come into the Dollar Store looking for fruits and vegetables. It's gotten to the point where a lot of the gas stations, they will have little baskets with things like bananas and apples and potatoes and onions and things like that. Because there is no grocery store on this side of town. We need a lot. We need the City to do something about these abandoned properties that we have over here. You either tear them down or you sell them to somebody. With abandoned places like that, you're pretty much allowing a lot of the crimes to go on. Because there are places. There are little pockets and corners and things like that for stuff like that to happen. If you go on the other side of town, there aren't any things like that. And going back to the church situation, if you go to a place like Haile Plantation or whatever, you'll see they only have maybe one or two megachurches that the entire community goes to. We need a lot on this side of town. I can't name everything off the top of my head at this moment, but it's—

C: We need a garden. A community garden. And teach them that these people how to grow their own.

D: I was gonna say, we need everybody to start their own garden.

C: The response is violence, because you are starving people in this cluster. And when you hungry, you get agitated. You get annoyed. You start trying to find your food. You're trying to find something to make some kind of money, so if the drug thing ain't working, what else is there? We're gonna break into somebody's house. We're gonna sleep in someone's garden shed. [Laughter] Or we're gonna sleep in someone's car. Or we're gonna find something. Something is gonna happen, so whether it's violence, or whether it's peacefully, it's gonna happen. Regardless. Cause you're stuffing everybody into, like, a little bowl, and it's not gonna work.

D: My thing about the whole food situation is that what a lot of people don't get, is that when you live on low income, and you live paycheck to paycheck, you're not always buying for quality. You're buying for quantity. You're trying to make this last or whatever. So a lot of people buy packaged foods and things like that. And they sell a lot of the packaged foods over here, because we're not buying because this is what we like. We buying because this is what we can afford and it's a lot of it. And I can have that for maybe two weeks or the entire month, or however long it takes me to get money again. So the whole food situation—cause I remember Ty Loudd saying something about "they don't think we like fresh fruits and vegetables." Which is crazy because every time you think about this community and the cooking, the type of food that come from this community, you always think about black eyed peas, collard greens, cabbage, corn bread, things like that. A lot of these things are made from scratch. That's not coming out of a can or a box or things like that. If things don't change on this side of town, I don't know what'll happen. Because, I mean, they already have their narrative of what's going on over here and what it's like in this community. I'm pretty sure that's just gonna get worse or whatever. I'm pretty sure that's just gonna get worse. And the people will respond violently, I think. Mostly because when somebody's wronged you, you really can't do anything about these powerful people. So all this energy and frustration and aggression you have is just gonna be reflected on the people you're around every day. So we're just gonna end up destroying each other because we don't know who to attack. And we don't know how to even get to these people. And not on a physical scale. Even on a legal and a social scale. We wouldn't even know how to talk to these people to get in the same room as them. So there's really nobody we can really talk to directly about what's going on here. And even if that's so, we have to get them to see our point and actually care about the point. That's why we have advocates. People like Ty Loudd who actually acts as a mouthpiece for this community. Hey. Don't forget about us. You remember us? We're not going anywhere. We still are people. We still want to be treated like people. And everybody always say, well why don't we get together and you all just fix your community up? And not really rely on anything else or some kind of hand out. Well, one, we are tax paying citizens. And our tax money goes to this city, just like anybody else's. So when this city receives money, we all should be reflected in the spending of that money. Two, what people don't realize is—or what they do realize but what they don't understand is, we do not own these communities. So if we all were to stand up and say, "Hey. We're gonna take responsibility for our community." We go clean it up, we go fix things. We make it look as nice as Haile Plantation's. The minute we do that, what's stopping them from evicting everybody? Oh, this is great. Okay, we're not renewing anybody's lease next year. And for damn sure, if I know the American government, as soon as this community becomes something as thriving as Haile Plantation would be, nine out of ten, almost everyone who got evicted will be audited. Where did you get all this money from? You live in impoverished community. Where all the sudden you get all this extra money from to fix it up and make it look so brilliant? So we can't really do anything with something we don't own. So pretty much, if nothing's changed, it's just gonna keep getting worse. We're gonna keep getting pushed further and further back until everyone on low income is just in this little bubble and it's just Gainesville around them. And that's how we feel. We feel like there's an entire city just buzzing around us, and then it's just our little corner. Because nothing changes. We see the same things every day. We've been seeing the same buildings since we were children. In the same condition since we were children.

D: We were one of the people that got evicted out of Tiger Bay for the roach infestation.

C: They knew that everybody was—and the crazy part is, they came to our door. Everybody's door. Knocking on their door, asking them what was the result of the trash situation. Like, how can they help to clean it up?

D: They asked everybody, "What was the problem you were having from the previous owner?”

C: So we tell them. We told them everything. And then here comes a surprise inspection. And you're trying to clean your house to get rid of all these roaches. You're really trying to deep clean. They see the mess and they're like, "It's time for you to get evicted." You've got seven day notice to clean this up. They come to you on the sixth day with a surprise inspection and, "Oh, look. I still see a roach on the wall. Nope. You gotta go."

D: Even the exterminators told us it takes months to get rid of roaches. Not days.

C: They gave everybody seven days to clear their roach problem.

D: And then once you have an infestation, you have to pretty much get rid of everything. Anything you keep, they can still live in. We've had computers, game systems, radios, that you've got rid of everything.

C: I had a big, beautiful bookshelf. [Laughter]

D: But you got this one thing that you're trying to hold onto, and that could still have something inside of it. And then, boom, all over again. Not only that, if you have neighbors with the same problem, it can spread to you.

C: And once they move, it spreads. So it's just like it's your fault. Your problem.

D: And it's hard to get away from those type of things living in those type of communities.

C: Poor conditions.

C: No, it was seven days to clear the roach problem. And to clean up the apartment. They came to us on a laundry day and on a day that we said, "We're tired of the roaches. We finna throw everything out." Like, we was throwing everything out. So, they came. Surprise knock on the door. They stepping over clothes and things that we're trying to throw away, and then they're like, "We gonna need y'all to clean this up and get the roach problem fixed." And I'm like, "That's what we're in the process of doing." And here comes the note on the door. You've got seven days to clean up the apartment, clean up the roaches, things like that. On the sixth day we left out of town. Our daughter was sick. We dropped a friend off at—where was it—Alachua? We went to Alachua. And my god brother was at my apartment. And the lady walks in and she sees a roach run up the wall and she just turns her head and leave. And then when I get back, she calls me and tells me that we are evicted. So, yeah. It was the whole entire—

D: From the trash problem, it spread to everybody in certain sections.

C: It spread to us, I think it was a dude or lady behind us. It was the lady across the hall, and a few more people in different other buildings. So, yeah.

C: Oh, no. No, they just—

D: The place was previously redeveloped, maybe a few years prior. And they were just still trying to figure out—and whoever owned it, I guess they decided, "Eh. Whatever." And they was in the process of selling it, and during that time everything sloped. There were actually families of buzzards just hovering around the dumpsters. People were afraid to take the trash out. These giant ass birds was just hovering over the dumpsters and stuff.

C: They would pile their truck up with trash and move it to another place, or use the dumpster at Dollar General. They would use any other dumpster besides ours. It was bad. It was really bad.

C: Ah, my heart.

D: Photo albums and stuff like that.

C: Photo albums. We had to throw out my daughter's blood samples that we put in the freezer, cause they were in the refrigerator. We had to throw out our marriage license. Not the license but the certificate. We had to throw out pretty much our children's toys, because they burrowed in there.

D: And like I said, once you get them, you gotta get rid of everything. We made the mistake of thinking we can keep things and ended up getting the problem all over again. The last place we moved from, we totally got rid of the problem. Everything was fine. We threw away things, we started over from scratch. Then we had a neighbor who had a terrible roach problem. So terrible that everyone who told us, soon as we moved into the community. The pizza man, the exterminator who came around, told us that, "Hey. She has a roach problem." Ended up getting the problem again, had to do that stuff all over again. Tried to keep things.

C: All over again. So it's just like, getting rid of stuff is hard, because you don't have the money to replace it.

D: Yeah. And you live paycheck to paycheck. You cannot afford to throw everything you have away. Like, literally everything. To the point when you just sitting in the middle of the room with a candle.

C: Yes. Cause they will get everywhere. Yes. And it doesn't help the fact that you live by woods. [Laughter] It doesn't help the fact that you live by water. [Laughter]

D: And exterminators tell us off the top that, "Hey. Roaches are already in places. They just need a reason to come out." But that stuff is still blamed on the residents most of the time. And that keeps a lot of people from re-renting and moving places. And you have people who will just trash you. So, no matter what you do, you're gonna get a bad rap from somebody.

C: Every apartment complex after Tiger Bay that we tried to get into, they sabotaged us.

D: Would not rent to us. The place we just moved from, we only got there because we talked to the landlord in person at the last minute. He said he had one apartment left. Luckily I had the cash on me. Here. My family needs a place to go. And after that, we said, "Hey. We need to hunker down and own our own shit." So even if we do get this problem, we can handle it. And we can build ourselves back up. Not wait until someone says—wants to throw us a bone and says, "Hey. You can live here." So we wanted to make sure we had our own—our kids had their own space where they can roam around and not be too quiet, and not worry about someone else's children destroying things. And now they're just another face in the crowd of kids who they see in the community, and now everybody's to blame. Like strict curfews and things like that. Even when you live in those type of communities, you just get more police action. Okay, this community has the reputation of this. They could move everybody out tomorrow. Move brand new people in that they know nothing about. This community is still gonna get the type of reputation that it does. So, we've seen police in these particular streets, not as often as we would if we stayed two streets over in Gardenia. We saw the police every day. That was police training camp. They literally walk the newbies around or whatever. And we know it, because when we're going to our trash cans, and when we walking home and stuff, we get stopped and they're asking us questions. And we're looking at this cop, and we're looking at this new cop that we've never seen before, and he's doing all the talking.

C: We had one cop stop us on a bike. We were getting in our car. We stayed in Gardenia, in A-1. And he rides up, and he's like, "Is your name Antwan?" And my husband's like, "No, my name's Munch." [Laughter] And he's like, "No, what's your government?" And he's like, "Devonderick Johnson." And he's like, "You look like an Antwan, this guy that we're looking for." And we're like, "No, his name is Devonderick Johnson." Like, you literally had to get out your ID to show him that this is who I am. So you don't come in and you're asking questions and stuff. You're automatically assuming, you are who I say you are. So, we have those. He was on a bike. Where are you gonna put me? [Laughter]

D: You, on the handlebars! You're going to jail. [Laughter] But yeah. A lot of the police activity is one thing that I think needs to change. I don't think it will, because there are some spots that need it. Not even some spots that need it. There are some problems within some of those communities that require police activity. But once that happened, it's branded that this is a community-wide problem. So now everyone's involved and everyone's a suspect of whatever's going on. I don't see that changing anytime soon. The whole narrative of the community. No, I don't see that changing anytime soon.

D: I don't know what's needed. Because a lot of people just so untrusting. We don't know who to trust. And we don't know who to talk to. We don't know what's real about it, a situation. We don't know what's real about the people that we're talking to. And we're so used to being gathered up and riled up for nothing. And a lot of people just aren't feeling that. Some of them are hopeful. They'll still come out and support. Hey! You know what I'm saying? Blah, blah, blah. But a lot of them just—why should I care? What is this going to do? What's different about this that's not different about the other things that has came and gone? Or that's been promised and forgot about or whatever. I don't know how to build transparency within the community. And we all need some kind of common ground to actually sit down on. We need something that's gonna spark similar interest. And if we can get that, that'd be great, but the thing is, we have the older generation who just swears, "Everybody's gone crazy. We don't know what's wrong with anybody." And you have the younger generation, who's screaming, "Nobody's listening. We've been telling you this the whole damn time but nobody wants to open their ear to the problem or whatever." To be perfectly honest, at this point in time, this community—I think we just need to trick everybody to come to the table. [Laughter] We need a big ass lie that's gonna work for everybody. "Hey, this is happening! Or somebody wants to talk about this. Blasé, blasé, blasé. Now that we're all in the room, lock the doors. Let's sit down and talk about it. Because we're so untrusting, yet we're so ingrained in what works for us. One thing about people in low income, live paycheck to paycheck. One thing about Black people in general, once we find our routine and what works for us, we stop looking. Because we don't know who else to trust. Once we find who we think we can trust, we stick with it. That's why we don't shop around for a lot of things, that's why we don't deal with a lot of outside people, that's why we keep our heads so in one direction. Or so focused on what we got going on. Because we don't know what your intentions are. So I think we just need to—the ultimate goal—we gotta find a way to trick everybody into helping themselves. Because you can't tell them what's wrong. I can't remember the guy's name off the top of my head, but the guy who started FUBU. I started following him on Instagram. And one thing he said that stuck out to me, he said, "People don't buy logic, they buy emotion." If people feel a certain way, and their feelings are either gonna draw them to it or keep them away from it. We need to get something that makes everybody either feel good enough where they want to come to the table and actually sit down and talk about that, or feel terrible enough that they band against something and still come to the table and sit down and talk about that. One thing about Donald Trump is he's got people talking. At least talking about, "Hey. This is a problem. What the hell is going on?" We don't give a fuck about him. We don't give a fuck about what's going on. Because half the shit that's going on—the government shutdown, the recession—we didn't know what a recession was until they gave it a name. None of that stuff affects our community, really, because we are still at the bottom of the barrel. We already have what's lower than low. So the stuff that they're going through and whining about, that's a Tuesday for us. That's normal. So we either need to find something that's so great that everyone agrees, or something so terrible that everybody agrees to hate it. And get everybody to sit down and talk about it. Whatever needs to be fixed. That's really, I think, is our last resort. Trick people into helping themselves.