Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City

by Andrea Elliott

When Dasani hears “shelter boogie,” all she can think to say is what her mother always says: that Auburn is a “pit stop.” She is just passing through, whereas the projects are forever. Dasani says this out loud while walking by the Walt Whitman Houses: “You will live in the projects forever, as will your kids’ kids, and your kids’ kids’ kids.” Dasani knows that the battle is asymmetrical. People stay in the projects for the same reason that a quarter million New Yorkers are currently on the public housing waitlist: the rent, for low-income families, is heavily subsidized. Dasani’s parents have been on the waitlist six times. Even if they were lucky enough to land in the projects surrounding Auburn—Whitman or Ingersoll, where Dasani’s grandmother grew up—they would still need to make the rent every month. Public housing may represent all kinds of inertia. But to live at Auburn is to admit the ultimate failure—the inability to give your children a roof. There is no recovering from “shelter boogie.” The most Dasani can do is duck the label.