A couple of weeks ago I was scheduled to help with an eviction. The job was indefinitely postponed because earlier in the week a Sheriff’s deputy sustained a serious gunshot wound while executing an eviction in Ballard. The resident died by her own hand in that incident.

Evictions are among my least favorite parts of this job. It often starts with me crouching at a door with a cluster of policemen standing behind me waiting for me to quietly pick the lock. The pressure of this does not make me a more efficient lockpicker. And these days, as I fumble with the lock, it’s almost inevitable that someone behind me will mention The Lockpicking Lawyer, that talented YouTube star whose hobby lockpicking videos make me look like a silly amateur. On one occasion I spent about ten nervous minutes picking a lock and as soon as I got it open and turned around to face the waiting officers I heard the deadbolt snap shut behind me; the resident inside had been standing on the other side of the door.

In most cases, once I get the door open, I’m politely brushed to the side as the police stream into the house. As soon as it’s considered safe for me enter, I have to go in and secure the house. Sometimes the evictees are miserably gathering up their most treasured possessions before everything is removed from the house. I’ve never been into a well-kept eviction home. They usually smell nauseating. They’re always in shambles. Once I had to wade through a room that was piled chest-high with empty beer cans. There’s often a carpeted room that the residents have been letting their dogs deposit their waste in. Sometimes the human residents have used the carpet for the same purpose to spite the landlord.

A few years ago I had to do an eviction around the time of all the Defund-the-Police protests. This was a second attempt at evicting a resident who’d recently experienced a parade of devastating setbacks. On the first eviction attempt he had flashed a gun and the operation was terminated. So on this attempt the eviction team congregated several blocks away at a public park. I would estimate that there were no fewer than thirty law enforcement officers there from various departments, including SWAT. The guy leading the operation gathered everyone into a circle and told them what to expect. One thing I remember clearly was him exhorting them to exercise restraint if the resident had to be subdued; he didn’t want any more officers than necessary to get involved if a physical altercation transpired. It was only a month after the murder of George Floyd and he was afraid of cell phone footage appearing on YouTube showing a down-and-out tenant at the bottom of an unholy dogpile of Seattle policemen.

I, along with the other civilians present, were told to wait there in the park until the property was cleared, and then they all got in their vehicles and the entire caravan snaked out of the parking lot and down the road to ascend upon the house. By the time I got there, the house had been swept for residents and explosives and there was no longer a door frame to hold the door shut. I did what I could to install a padlock and hasp on the door as the team of junk removers carted furniture and household items through the door I was working on. I was in their way and they in mine. The padlock didn’t prevent the resident from re-entering that same night, but it did serve its other intended purpose, which was to necessitate that the evicted resident forcibly breach a locked door to get in.

So as I was saying, I don’t like doing evictions. They’re stressful and the houses are usually gross. And they always represent a terrible moment in the life of the tenant, which I’m somehow contributing to. This is not to say that landlords aren’t entitled to—often financially dependent upon—the rent that they’re owed. But gosh if I don’t prefer to be changing the locks for a happy young couple who have just gotten the keys to their first home.