When the market crashed and those men in their fancy suits jumped from any open window they could find, no one thought of us. We lost everything and there was no way to earn it back. We had no nest egg, no savings, no insurance, and everyone we knew was in the same position.

We didn’t build it. We found and claimed it because we had nowhere else to go. We tried to make it habitable by patching up the holes in the roof with scraps of wood and metal we scrounged from trash piles. We found cloth and made curtains to block the wind.

Dad keeps saying things will get better, but for now, we just have to make do and survive. Survival doesn’t feel like enough. We didn’t crash the market. We just got crushed by those men in their fancy suits as they fell.