Many of the poor people Kozol profiles had been packed into the decrepit and dangerous Martinique Hotel in midtown Manhattan in the late 1980s. There, the children sometimes panhandled close to the touristy theater district, though they were kept away from theater-goers by the police and private guards. The conditions of the Martinique were horrific, but the administration of New York City did not intervene to clean up the shelter.

Then, in the late 1980s, the poor were shuffled to the poorest part of the poorest borough: Mott Haven, in the South Bronx. One of the women Kozol knew in the Martinique noted the way in which the press and New York City bureaucrats often used words like “overflow” to describe the homeless, as if they were refuse. Packed off in the South Bronx, they were surrounded by environmental hazards such as bus and truck depots and medical waste incinerators that caused asthma and other health concerns, and they had access to inferior schools. They were largely out of sight of the rich of New York, and mostly out of mind, too.