Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth

by Sarah Smarsh

The transience of the poor suggests instability, but what it really represents is poverty itself. Betty’s long list of residences wasn’t for poor decision making but something like the opposite.

If you live in a house that needs shingles, you will attend a school that needs books, and while sitting in that school’s desk you’ll struggle to focus because your tooth needs a dentist or your stomach needs food. Teachers, for such children, become mothers; schools become houses; and cafeterias become hearths.

In 2006, there were about 717,000 foreclosures throughout the country; in 2008, that number was 2,330,000. The foreclosure count peaked in 2010 at almost 2.9 million and wouldn’t return to pre-crisis levels until almost a decade after the bubble burst.