Hillbilly Elegy

renting his property, but when he
qualified his house for the Section 8
voucher, he virtually assured that would
change. Mamaw saw it as a betrayal,
ensuring that “bad” people would move
into the neighborhood and drive down
property values.
Despite our efforts to draw bright
lines between the working and
nonworking poor, Mamaw and I
recognized that we shared a lot in
common with those whom we thought
gave our people a bad name. Those
Section 8 recipients looked a lot like us.
The matriarch of the first family to move
in next door was born in Kentucky but
moved north at a young age as her