A few days before Thanksgiving 2019, Joyce Williams lost her job as a security guard in Chicago, and in the few months it took her to find work again, she fell behind on rent.
Her apartment, located in a low-slung brick building across from a boarded-up church on the city’s South Side, was in poor condition. The thermostat was broken, and the back door had such big gaps around it that Williams would sometimes light the stove to try and stay warm. Mice skittered across the floor, and someone had painted over obvious water damage in the hallways. But she couldn’t afford to lose the unit.