Kozol’s narrative begins on Christmas Eve in 1985, at the homeless shelter the Martinique Hotel near Macy’s in New York City. There, 1,400 children and 400 of their parents live in squalid conditions in poorly-heated rooms where they are constantly sick and underfed. On nights when Les Misérables played in a local theater, some of the older children panhandled to get extra money, though private guards and the police chased them away. The younger children then panhandled in the traffic closer to the hotel. Meanwhile, many of the adults in the hotel turned to drug use in the crowded, horrid conditions in which they found themselves, and the top floors of the hotel became a center for drug dealing and for the transmission of HIV (though the disease was not well understood at that time).

The social services agencies in New York City knew about these conditions but did nothing to change them. There were also carcinogens, in the form of asbestos, in the hallways, and even greater dangers in the managers, one of whom extracted sexual favors from women in return for goods like cribs and linens. There was no one the residents could complain to, and the management bought the residents’ compliance by means such as allowing illegal hotplates.