Five Families Trying to Stay Housed

There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America follows five working-class Black families in Metro Atlanta over several years, beginning before COVID-19 and continuing through the pandemic and its aftermath. Although their circumstances differ, they repeatedly face the same problem: they are working, often at multiple jobs, but Atlanta’s housing market is becoming increasingly impossible for them to survive.

The book places their experiences against Atlanta’s longer history of housing displacement, from the destruction of public housing communities to redlining, discriminatory lending, and gentrification around the BeltLine. For the families themselves, however, the crisis is experienced in immediate terms—rent payments, eviction notices, motel bills, bad credit, lost jobs, broken cars, and the constant search for somewhere their children can sleep.

Britt Loses Her Voucher—and Eventually Her Neighborhood

Brittany “Britt” Wilkinson works as a line cook at the Atlanta airport while raising her young children, Desiree and Kyrie. After spending two years on the Atlanta Housing Authority’s waiting list, she finally receives a Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher and moves into a two-bedroom apartment at QLS Gardens.

That stability disappears after Britt temporarily allows her formerly incarcerated cousin Steve to stay with her. Because of his criminal background, the landlord refuses to renew Britt’s lease. The voucher should theoretically allow her to rent somewhere else, but she cannot find a private landlord willing to accept it before it expires. After waiting years for assistance, Britt loses it.

Through Yateshia Evans, an old friend of Britt’s mother Cass, she learns about Gladstone Apartments, where leasing manager Cindy is willing to rent inexpensive units to families who have few other options. Britt gets a one-bedroom apartment for $550 a month, and Cass also lives at Gladstone.

Then COVID-19 arrives. Britt loses her airport food-service job and improvises, turning her back porch into an informal hair salon to make enough money to survive. Just as she is trying to hold things together, Empire Communities purchases Gladstone. The affordable complex is slated for demolition so high-end BeltLine townhomes and condominiums can replace it.

Britt and Cass are evicted. Britt’s situation deteriorates further when she misses car payments after spending money on Christmas gifts for her children, and the car is repossessed. She and the kids begin cycling through other people’s homes. Her friend Janeka lets them sleep on her living-room floor for six months, while Yasmine later lets Britt stay on the floor of her studio.

The instability costs Britt more than housing. After her relationship with Janeka deteriorates, maintenance workers throw away important family documents, including birth certificates. Britt discovers that her credit score makes getting another apartment nearly impossible, so she asks her younger sister Aaliyah to apply for a lease on her behalf.

Eventually, Britt drives past the place where Gladstone once stood. The affordable apartments have been bulldozed. Looking at what has happened to the neighborhood and considering everything she has gone through simply trying to house herself and her children, she reaches the conclusion that gives the book its title: “Me and my kids? There’s no place for us here.”

Kara Works Around the Clock

Kara Thompson is raising four children while working jobs that include janitorial and EKG work at Grady Memorial Hospital, home health care, DoorDash, and eventually security work. Even before becoming homeless, she is stretched beyond exhaustion. At one point, sleep deprivation causes a devastating rollover crash that she survives before giving birth to her youngest child, Joshua.

Kara’s housing crisis begins in earnest at her rental house on Oakwood, where landlord Dejene refuses to properly replace a badly corroded 23-year-old water heater. Their dispute ultimately ends in eviction.

With nowhere to go, Kara drives her children to Florida, hoping they can stay with Darius, the father of her oldest daughter, Grace. Instead, an altercation with Darius’s pregnant girlfriend Tamara ends with Tamara stabbing Kara in the shoulder with a fork. Kara returns to Atlanta with all four children.

A motel costs $380 a week, and shelter beds are unavailable. Kara begins sleeping with her children inside her Toyota, parking at gas stations and Walmarts.

Her best hope comes through Carla Wells, a case manager at Nicholas House who helps Kara enter the Homeless to Homes rapid-rehousing program. Kara is approved for a three-bedroom apartment at Chelsea Gardens, but she cannot move in because the city requires a 35-day environmental review. By the time the bureaucratic process is finished, the apartment has been given to someone else.

A sympathetic leasing agent, Ian, offers her a two-bedroom instead. Kara accepts because her children need somewhere to live immediately, even though doing so means surrendering the 12 months of rental subsidy she could have received.

Now she has housing but must somehow afford it. Kara works as many as 90 hours a week. When her children are expelled from KinderCare after Jermaine scratches another child, her childcare disappears too. She takes an overnight security job in Buckhead and leaves 10-year-old Grace responsible for her siblings. Before leaving, Kara removes potential dangers by locking away kitchen knives and stove knobs. At night, she plays a recording of herself singing gospel songs so her children can hear their mother’s voice while she is away working to keep them housed.

Maurice and Natalia Fall from Stability into Extended-Stay Living

Maurice Taylor and his wife, Natalia, moved from Washington, D.C., to Atlanta hoping to build a life in the “Black Mecca.” For four years they have what they were seeking: a stable rented condo in Sandy Springs where they raise their children, Shantel, Anthony, and eventually baby Matthew.

Their stability begins unraveling in 2019. Shortly after Matthew’s birth and the sudden death of Maurice’s beloved cousin Aaron, their landlord Summer announces that she is selling the condo.

Credit problems make finding another home difficult. The Taylors pay $1,450 to Liberty Rent, a cosigning company, to qualify for an apartment at The Whitney that itself costs $1,450 a month. When they move in, they discover a severe cockroach infestation.

Natalia, meanwhile, is suffering debilitating panic attacks and depression. After a major panic attack at her State Farm job, she goes on short-term disability. A single late rent payment in January 2020 is enough to trigger another disaster: a marshal arrives and evicts the family.

They move into Extended Stay America. Instead of making housing cheaper, homelessness makes it much more expensive. The family spends roughly $2,200 every month on the extended-stay room and remains there for eight months.

Maurice eventually pays off $2,900 they owe Liberty Rent without telling Natalia, allowing the family to qualify for another Sandy Springs apartment by paying a double deposit. They then begin pursuing homeownership through NACA, only to learn they will need to spend another year saving $4,000 and reducing their debts before they can qualify. Natalia starts a bath-and-body pop-up business as the family tries once again to create lasting stability.

Michelle’s Homelessness Becomes a Personal Collapse

Michelle Simmons is raising teenagers DJ and Danielle and toddler Skye when her partner, Jacob, secretly stops paying the rent at Eastwyck Village and disappears.

On September 9, 2019, DJ and Danielle get off their school bus and discover their family’s belongings dumped onto the lawn.

Michelle takes the children to the A2B Budget Hotel and gets a job working nights at the front desk. DJ and Danielle take care of Skye while their mother works, forcing the older children to assume responsibilities far beyond their years.

Then Michelle loses the hotel job.

Her attempts to survive become increasingly desperate. She pawns her laptop, sells blood plasma, sells food stamps for 50 cents on the dollar, and panhandles outside Big Lots. At one point, she secretly sleeps on the concrete floor of an unheated hotel storage room. Phillis, an outreach leader at The Beloved Community church, eventually pays for two weeks at Efficiency Lodge.

Michelle later receives housing in Stone Mountain through PCCI and finds work at a Salvation Army shelter, seemingly giving her another chance at stability. But the accumulated trauma takes a severe toll. She begins drinking heavily and becomes involved with Nick, a younger abusive man.

The relationship and alcoholism send Michelle into another downward spiral. She loses her apartment and begins sleeping in MARTA stations. Nick severely beats her, and she eventually enters an inpatient women’s rehabilitation facility. From a laundromat, Michelle makes an emotional call to her children and asks them to forgive her.

DJ, meanwhile, begins finding some stability of his own through community organizer LA Pink, becoming her “right-hand man” as she assists families living in extended-stay motels.

Celeste Battles Cancer While Searching for Somewhere Safe

For Celeste Walker, homelessness begins with a literal disaster. In May 2018, the rental house where she lives with her children burns down. Instead of releasing her from the lease, private equity landlord The Prager Group demands double rent to break it and obtains a default eviction judgment involving the burned property.

Celeste temporarily sublets another home, but that arrangement ends horrifically when a visitor accidentally fires a gun through the floor and kills a pregnant teenager in the apartment below.

Celeste moves her children into Efficiency Lodge, paying $257 a week. While living there, she is diagnosed with advanced ovarian and breast cancer. Even cancer does not make the housing bureaucracy easier to navigate. Gateway denies her housing assistance because, under HUD rules, staying in an extended-stay hotel does not qualify as “literal homelessness.”

Trying to survive, Celeste operates an informal daycare from her motel room. Then Efficiency Lodge conducts mass evictions at gunpoint, throwing already vulnerable families back into instability.

Celeste moves repeatedly. She stays with her friend Ricky until Ricky’s cousin attempts to sexually assault her. Val, the owner of Talk of the Town soul food restaurant, allows the family to stay in a basement. They also spend time at a Howard Johnson before caseworker Joya places Celeste in a rodent-infested Dixie Hills rooming house the family calls “Hell House.”

By this point, Celeste’s medical condition is becoming catastrophic. Post-cancer starvation complications reduce her weight to 85 pounds, and doctors insert a feeding tube. She raises money through GoFundMe for a portable feeding pump, but her living environment remains dangerously unstable.

Eventually, Celeste decides she cannot keep her children there. She withdraws her sons from school, packs the family into her Durango, and drives back to Tampa, Florida.

The Families Keep Fighting to Survive

Running alongside the five families’ stories are people trying to challenge the system that keeps pushing them into homelessness. LaQuana Alexander, known as LA Pink, runs The Community Boutique with LA Pink, loading her car with food and good-quality clothing and bringing supplies directly to families living in extended-stay motels.

After residents Travis and Eboni are among those evicted from Efficiency Lodge at gunpoint, they join the Housing Justice League and work with organizer Natalie McLaughlin to fight predatory landlords. DeKalb County Commissioner Larry Johnson intervenes during the Efficiency Lodge lockouts, while the book also follows the legal and political forces surrounding the property.

The five families do not arrive at one neat shared ending. Britt is still trying to find a landlord who will accept her despite her damaged credit. Kara has an apartment but must work extraordinary hours to keep it. Maurice and Natalia have returned to rental housing and are trying to position themselves for homeownership. Michelle enters rehab after losing her housing again. Celeste, physically devastated by cancer and unable to find safe housing, leaves Atlanta altogether.

What connects their stories is that none of these families simply stopped trying. They work, take extra jobs, seek assistance, rely on friends and relatives, move into motels, apply for programs, and repeatedly rebuild after setbacks. Yet again and again, the smallest disruption is enough to undo whatever stability they have managed to create, leaving them working constantly while still searching for a secure place to call home.