After Britt moved out, Gladstone became desolate. Cass still slept in an empty apartment without heat, cleaning Airbnbs for her sister’s business while reflecting on wealth inequality.

DJ dreaded returning home. Michelle’s overnight job at the Salvation Army shelter took a physical and emotional toll, given her nearly two-hour commute. DJ had to care for three-year-old Skye with Danielle until morning. Michelle quit, promising to find better work, but she mostly stayed in bed. She met Nick, a man 17 years her junior. When Nick had Michelle shut Skye out of their bedroom, Danielle moved in with her great-aunt Regina.

DJ was left caring for Skye alone. He discovered that they were behind on rent. When he confronted Michelle, she taunted that he was like his abusive father. On November 2, Pink picked up DJ after a fight with Michelle. He would stay with her.

Britt flew to Milwaukee to visit her father, Alonzo, who had recently been released from prison, but the reunion was disappointing, as he was distant. She returned to Atlanta feeling resigned. Pink and DJ delivered meals together, and DJ confided in Pink. She promised to help him with school and with honing his talents in poetry and music, taking him to a recording studio.

Celeste found her rooming house in Dixie Hills worse than Efficiency—a dilapidated bungalow with dangerous holes in the floor. Her housemates included a woman whose children were in foster care and an elderly woman with dementia who could not care for herself. The narrative explains that rooming houses, often operating illegally, are extremely profitable for landlords who subdivide homes to target the poorest tenants.

Caseworker Joya appointed Celeste as an unpaid house manager. Because of her cancer treatment, Celeste’s health had deteriorated to the point that she weighed only 85 pounds. She needed a portable feeding tube pump requiring a $450 copay, and she raised the money through GoFundMe in one day.

After nearly six months, Celeste decided to move to Florida, contacting Micah’s grandmother in Tampa. Returning to Florida meant abandoning her dream to open a restaurant, Passion Foods, the plan she had made with her brother Leonard before he was killed. At their storage unit, she found a painting by Slim, the man killed at the hotel. Jalen asked to hang it in their future home. Celeste set her GPS for Tampa and began the drive.

Natalia learned about Maurice’s secret payments of their Liberty Rent debt, but was only half-heartedly upset, hoping it might help them secure housing. Through a Facebook group, she found a three-bedroom apartment in Sandy Springs, though they had to pay a doubled security deposit due to poor credit.

At their storage unit, Maurice discovered that mold (from the rain during their Whitney eviction) had ruined their belongings. Over the following months, Natalia and Shantel furnished the apartment with yard sale finds and stimulus checks.

In February, Natalia attended an intake session with the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America, a homeownership nonprofit that didn’t use credit scores. The counselor determined they had buying power of about $203,000 but needed nearly $4,800 at closing. Natalia felt deflated, but Maurice offered to get a second job. By the Chattahoochee River, Natalia sat with her family, reflecting that this peaceful scene was what she had hoped for when they moved to Georgia.

Michelle woke with a hangover in her cold, dark apartment. In the three months since her children had left, her estrangement had deepened. On Thanksgiving, when she had abandoned DJ to go out with Nick, DJ had subsequently moved in with his sisters at their great-aunt Regina’s. Michelle’s communication became infrequent and erratic, and her late-night calls hinted at Nick’s physical abuse. After one call, when she said she had nothing to live for, Regina advised the teens to turn off their phones at night.

In May, Michelle appeared at Regina’s home demanding Skye. Regina was shocked by Michelle’s gaunt appearance and refused her entry. Michelle had been unhoused, sleeping at bus stops and on bus station floors. Five weeks later, she called from jail: Nick had beaten her, and both were arrested. She took the blame for his gun. After six nights in jail, she disappeared.

Two months later, Michelle sat in a laundromat with a cut, swollen face after fleeing Nick, who had threatened to kill her. The text notes that Nick later pleaded guilty to murdering another girlfriend. Michelle had contacted a domestic violence shelter offering substance use treatment. She video-called her children. Though startled by her appearance, the teens recognized their mother’s clear voice. She told them she was going somewhere safe to get herself straightened out, weeping and apologizing.

After Britt fell behind on a subprime car loan with a 27% interest rate, her car was repossessed. She retrieved it by paying past-due fees. By spring, her relationship with her roommate, Janeka, had broken down. After a trip to Florida, Britt returned to find that Janeka had moved out and changed the locks. A maintenance crew had thrown out Britt’s belongings, including vital documents.

She and the kids moved into her friend Yasmine’s small studio apartment. A caseworker told her that because she was staying with a friend rather than a shelter, she was not eligible for housing assistance. Over five months, they moved between cheap hotels and the homes of friends and relatives. She gave up on apartment applications after being ghosted. Her Chick-fil-A promotion was a bright spot.

Desperate, Britt asked her sister Aaliyah to apply for an apartment in her name. Though worried, Aaliyah agreed. Britt drove past the demolished Gladstone site, where a sign announced Empire Zephyr, a residential building with “a mix of condos and farmhouse-style townhomes ‘starting from the low $400s’” (336). The website described a “transformative time” in Chosewood Park. Britt felt that her city was becoming a place where there was no room for her and her children.

After moving into Chelsea Gardens, Kara initially felt relief but struggled with bills, including rent-to-own furniture and a major car repair. Without the yearlong subsidy she had forfeited, she feared losing her home. She became angry and paranoid, sending a threatening email to her former case manager.

She experienced moments of grace (a kind mechanic, a happy birthday with her kids), and she paid these blessings forward. However, her apartment’s electric bills became catastrophic: $387 in November, $673 in December. Despite conservation efforts, the problem was systemic: Many Chelsea Gardens residents had similar issues. Her electricity was shut off in January; her phone was then disconnected. She and her children slept in her car.

The cascading problems continued: Kara fell behind on rent and car payments. In May, all four of her children were expelled from daycare after she insulted the regional director. Lacking childcare, she quit her job. Her only option was an overnight security job, leaving the children alone. Kara had begun to accept that she needed therapy, but she learned that her Medicaid didn’t cover mental health services.

After a special dinner and bath time, she tucked the children in, giving 10-year-old Grace a phone and telling her she was in charge. Before leaving for work, she removed the stove knobs, hid the knives, locked the door, and walked to her car.

Goldstone recounts participating in Atlanta’s “Point-in-Time” census of the unhoused, observing its flawed process: A family living in a car drives off, uncounted. The families profiled in the book, living in cars or hotels, are similarly invisible to HUD’s official count. This exclusion dates to the 1980s, when “homelessness” was framed as individual pathology rather than a structural issue caused by a lack of affordable housing. New data, including those “doubled-up” or in hotels, reveals a conservative estimate of over 4 million people living unhoused in the US. The problem is escalating due to the gap between wages and housing costs, and the predatory practices of corporate landlords are another contributing factor.

More than a year after their forcible eviction, residents sued Efficiency Lodge. Led by Lindsey M. Siegel, a team from Atlanta Legal Aid Society argued on the residents’ behalf that (as Natalie McLaughlin had pointed out) since they had lived there for years, landlord-tenant law should have prevented their eviction. They won their case. Roy Barnes appealed on behalf of Efficiency Lodge, but the Georgia Court of Appeals upheld the verdict.

The author argues that the massive unhoused population is a recent, preventable phenomenon requiring that society treat housing as a human right. Immediate measures like rent control can help, but the long-term solution is massive investment in “social housing”: publicly owned housing permanently removed from the private market, modeled after successes in Vienna. The suffering is a societal choice: The resources and solutions exist, but the political will is lacking.