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The 1968 Civil Rights Act made housing discrimination illegal, but subtler forms prevailed. Crystal and Vanetta wanted to leave the ghetto, but landords like the one on Fifteenth Street turned them away. Other landlords and property management companies--like Affordable Rents--tried to avoid discri…

[...] A healthy chunk of Crystal's money also went into the offering basket the first Sunday of every month.

"I'm sowing seeds," Crystal said [...]

Vanetta held her chilled look. "That's why I don't creep with your church, 'cause they don't have nothing to offer you, but they got a lot to say…

Before her eviction, Beaker had asked Larraine why she didn't just sell her jewelry and pay Tobin. "Of course I'm not going to do that," she said. "I worked way too hard for me to sell my jewelry. ... I'm not going to sell my life savings because I'm homeless or I got evicted." It wasn't like she h…

[...] What the chief failed to realize, or failed to reveal, was that his department's own rules presented battered women with a devil's bargain: keep quiet and face abuse or call the police and face eviction.

[...] for the most part, tenants had a high tolerance for inequality. They spent little time questioning the wide gulf separating their poverty from Tobin's wealth or asking why rent for a worn-out aluminum-wrapped trailer took such a large chunk of their income. Their focus was on smaller, more ta…