In Milwaukee, an African-American family is evicted from their apartment complex in the middle of the winter. With no where else to go in the dreadful cold, they flee to the North Side of the city, which is made up of mostly other African Americans.
The mother of the family is Arleen Bell, a kind woman, with her two sons Jori and Jafaris. Their father abandoned the family, and now Bell and her children are left to fend for themselves They eventually are welcomed by an apartment with an African-American landlord, whose name is Sherenna Tarver.
The book shifts viewpoints, focusing on the tenants of Tarver's apartment building. The focus of the book is to demystify the so-called eviction epidemic in large cities across America. There simply isn't enough room or money for all of the apartment clients, so the first to go are typically African Americans, despite the fact that they have done nothing wrong. These people are left to fend for themselves, and often end up homeless without finding another place to live.
Sherenna was once a teacher, and lived with her husband Quentin. However, she decided that the landlord business was something she was interested in, and became acquainted with it. She knows many of her tenants well, like Lamar, the single father that lost his legs. At one point, she evicted Patrice, but she moved in on a lower floor of the building with her mother.
Readers are then introduced to the College Mobile Home Park owned by Tobin Charney and Lenny Larson. The area is poor, and the government wants to close the park. However, the two stick together and scrape up all of the money they can find so that their friends that live there are not left on the streets like so many others.
The book introduces many more characters, areas, and their stories, and each one is tragically hopeful. The book gives light to the horrible eviction crisis in America, and how many struggle from it every day.
