Britt examined her exhausted reflection after a night shift at Low Country, an airport restaurant. Her two-year-old son Kyrie had kept her awake until midnight. By six o’clock in the morning, she had dressed and fed both Kyrie and four-year-old Desiree before daycare. At her great-grandmother Granny’s apartment in East Lake, where the family had slept on a pullout sofa for five months, Britt avoided asking for permanent space, clinging to the belief that their stay was temporary.

When her mother, Cass, arrived to watch the kids, Britt left for work. Walking to the bus stop, she passed through a neighborhood where five generations of her family had lived at the East Lake Meadows public housing project. In 1961, Granny’s mother, Big Mama, was denied homeownership due to housing discrimination. The family eventually moved into East Lake Meadows, which was later demolished. Only 15% of former residents had qualified for the new development; Cass and her children were displaced.

On the train, Britt listened to gospel music to calm her anxiety. She checked her email, hoping for word from the Atlanta Housing Authority. Two years earlier, she had applied for a Section 8 voucher when the program reopened after 14 years. Out of 113,000 applicants, she was among the 10,000 selected for the waiting list. She had excluded her children’s father, Javon, from the application, a decision validated when he later became violent.

At the airport, Britt felt energized. She embraced Atlanta’s gentrification but knew her $1,920 monthly income could not cover the city’s median rent of $1,600. After her shift, she raced to the train station, checked her email one final time, and discovered a message from the Atlanta Housing Authority.

Twenty-nine-year-old Kara Thompson completed a 16-hour cleaning shift in the psychiatric ward at Grady Memorial Hospital. Pregnant and feeling first-trimester nausea subside, she took pride in her work ethic. As an outsourced contract employee without health insurance or paid leave, she was reluctant to miss work.

Heading to her car at six o’clock in the morning, she felt overwhelming exhaustion. She lost consciousness and crashed, and her Honda Pilot overturned. After being pulled from the wreckage, she woke in an ambulance returning to Grady. Her injuries were minor, and the baby was unharmed.

The ultrasound prompted memories of her first pregnancy in 2005, in high school. Her parents demanded that she terminate it. Afterward, classmates called her “baby killer.” She threw herself into work at McDonald’s as an escape. Fearing that she would be trapped in fast food, Kara attended Job Corps and then worked various jobs while earning her diploma alone. Her first daughter, Grace, was born in 2011; her parents offered no support. She had two more sons, each pregnancy bringing fierce self-reproach even as her children became her purpose.

She interpreted her and the baby’s survival as divine intervention. Her son Joshua was born in November 2018. His father had disconnected his phone. Five days before the delivery, Grady offered her a full-time EKG tech position with better pay and fewer overnight shifts. Alone with Joshua in the hospital, Kara felt an immediate bond and fell into a peaceful sleep.

Thirty-six-year-old Maurice Taylor woke his wife, Natalia, for her early shift at a State Farm call center. He worked as a service adviser at Enterprise Rent-A-Car for $11.50 per hour—a job he could walk to, since they couldn’t afford a car. He prepared waffles and bacon for their children, 11-year-old Shantel and eight-year-old Anthony, continuing a tradition from his childhood before his grandmother died (when he was 10) and cancer took his mother (when he was 17). He reflected on the social challenges Anthony faced due to alopecia (a pigmentation disorder) and autism.

That afternoon, Natalia came home to a spotless apartment. She suggested a spontaneous lakeside date since babysitters were too expensive. The couple had moved from Washington, DC, on New Year’s Eve 2013, viewing Atlanta as a “Black Mecca.” A corporate relocation placed them in Sandy Springs, a majority-white suburb. Initially shocked, they gradually appreciated the quietness, safety, and excellent schools.

They had moved into a two-bedroom condo owned by Summer, a lawyer, negotiating rent to $950. The following years had passed in contented monotony. With another baby on the way and Shantel requesting her own space, the condo’s only drawback was its lack of a third bedroom. They were such careful tenants that they sometimes paid rent early.

On Christmas Eve, 40-year-old Michelle prepared an elaborate Southern dinner at her three-bedroom apartment. She lived with her fiancé, Jacob, their two-year-old daughter, Skye, and her teenage children from a previous marriage, Danielle and DJ. She worried that this Christmas would not match the previous year’s joy, having noticed Jacob’s recent distant and irritable behavior.

Michelle was a stay-at-home mother studying online to become a social worker. Jacob was the family’s breadwinner, working as a handyman for their apartment complex. DJ, a tall, introspective teenager, was working on a graphic novel. When he appeared irritated, Michelle playfully danced with him until he grinned. Jacob arrived with a red velvet cake, and the family warmly greeted him.

Michelle and Jacob had first met in seventh grade and dated briefly in high school. Michelle had moved to Alabama and married Daniel, who grew possessive and violent. In winter 2013, she fled to Atlanta in the middle of the night with her children. Starting over proved difficult: Her grandmother was deceased, her mother died shortly after, and she was eventually asked to leave her aunt Regina’s home. She was extremely close with DJ and Danielle, having custom puzzle-piece necklaces made for the three of them. She had reconnected with Jacob in 2015, and he had clearly expressed interest in becoming part of her family’s lives.

Over their Christmas Eve dinner, the family laughed together. Danielle, who had been isolating herself, emerged. After dessert, they assembled a lopsided gingerbread house. Michelle felt unsettled, certain that Jacob had been avoiding eye contact. On impulse, she asked her family to join hands for a prayer.

On a Saturday morning in early January 2019, life stirred at Efficiency Lodge, an extended-stay hotel on Candler Road in DeKalb County. Hotel manager Lisa made rounds, collecting rent and looking after residents. The hotel sat in an economically depressed stretch of dialysis clinics, liquor stores, and ramshackle motels, functioning as a destination for those displaced from gentrifying neighborhoods.

Lisa greeted Celeste Walker, who paid her $257 weekly rent on time. Five weeks earlier, after a sleepless night in her Dodge Durango, Celeste had arrived and offered to clean the only available filthy room herself. She and her three children—Nyah (16), Jalen (14), and Micah (6)—had spent hours scrubbing it.

Eight months earlier, a threatening ex-boyfriend had destroyed her rental house in East Point by arson. The Red Cross had provided several hotel nights, but she had no renters’ insurance. Forced to choose between searching for housing and keeping her job, she quit and found new work. She temporarily sent her two boys to Tampa, Florida, while she and Nyah slept in the car. When she found a promising apartment, her application was rejected due to an eviction on her record: Her previous landlord had served a “tack and mail” eviction notice at her burned, uninhabitable house after she refused to pay rent to break her lease.

Through Facebook, Celeste arranged to sublet an apartment, but tragedy struck: A visitor accidentally fired a pistol through the floor, killing a pregnant 14-year-old girl below. Though the shooting was accidental, the family had to leave. She used the returned funds for Efficiency Lodge.

At the hotel, Celeste began operating Passion Foods from her room, selling elaborate meals for $10. In a neighborhood with only fast-food options, her cooking became extremely popular. In addition, she became the hotel’s go-to problem-solver, helping residents navigate bureaucracy. A social worker had confirmed that students living in hotels were classified as “homeless,” but Celeste could not bring herself to accept that label. Simultaneously, she began to experience abdominal pain.