The title is a clear indication about the meaning of the book. As a reporter, Kotlowitz seems to be trying to reconcile two very different worlds to one another. There is his audience, the kind of people who have extra cash to buy books by essayists, and the leisure to read them. Then there are his subjects, who are broken people made to be chronic suffers of poverty and social injustice.
The questions that pervade the book involve how outsiders treat these complicated, emotional, messy situations. This is never more true than with the issue of addiction. The young couple had just moved in when LaJoe realized that her boyfriend was an addict. Was she surprised? Probably not, because the issue was so pervasive in their culture that it was more disappointing than shocking. She realized that she was in a new family with a man that coped with his mental anguish through addictive drugs. When she asked him to stop, he failed, but perhaps this is an indication that drug abuse is only a symptom of the situation, not the essential problem.
The central problem seems to be related to hope, since hope is the fuel that could potentially inspire the two boys to make the most of their lives, to work hard while others around them are not, to try and look for opportunities when things look bleak—but without hope, there isn't much that they could accomplish, because the world they're being presented with is often dark and angsty and depressing.
That's why money is such a crucial aspect of this story. It isn't that money is a magic solution to serious problems like drug abuse or addiction, but if the family felt that by working strategically and by working together, like they could truly succeed financially, perhaps their dynamic would be different.
This is a problem to be solved jointly by all of us, Kotlowitz's audience, but the simplest macro solution would be to help very rich people find ways to use their extravagant wealth to improve the lives of the desperately poor.
