Without a Net: Middle Class and Homeless with Kids in America

by Michelle Kennedy

The shocking story of a suburban mother's plunge into homelessness Michelle Kennedy had a typical middle class American childhood in Vermont. She attended college, interned in the U.S. Senate, married her high school sweetheart and settled in the suburbs of D.C. But the comfortable life she was building quickly fell apart. At age twenty-four Michelle was suddenly single, homeless, and living out of a car with her three small children. She waitressed night shifts while her kids slept out in the diner's parking lot. She saved her tips in the glove compartment, and set aside a few quarters every week for truck stop showers for her and the kids. With startling humor and honesty, Kennedy describes the frustration of never having enough money for a security deposit on an apartment-but having too much to qualify for public assistance. Without A Net is a story of hope. Michelle Kennedy survives on her wits, a little luck, and a lot of courage. And in the end, she triumphs.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Poverty, Biography Memoir, Social Work, Economics, Biography

224 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Michelle Kennedy is the author of numerous books on parenting, the memoir "Without a Net: Middle Class and Homeless (With Kids) in America" published by Viking, the memoir "A Fine Mess: Living Simply With Children," and the novel, "Gandhi was a Libra."

Her articles and essays have been published in Salon.com, The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Redbook, Family Circle, FamilyFun Magazine and many other publications. She has also read her work on National Public Radio.

Michelle is the mother of eight, grandmother of one, and in addition to being a writer of words, is also a lover of dogs, a gardener of weeds (and weed!), and a knitter of tangled things.

Please find her on Facebook or write to her at mushergrrl@gmail.com

Reviews

[Crystal Starr · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has quite a personal story for me, so please, children, settle around and listen to Granny Crystal spin a yarn.

I was a sequestered homeschooled Evangelical Christian child. I entered the world of adulthood in 2002, totally and utterly clueless - and beyond the typical for any teenager-to-adult transition, I would argue. I really hadn't seen any of the world or met really any people outside my small, Evangelical Christian church bubble.

In the summer of 2003, I got my very first job (yes, at the age of 19, this was my first real job) working at a community college bookstore. I had tried applying to jobs in the past, but I was never accepted, so getting this job was a big deal for me. I am forever grateful to my boss from this job, a woman who took a chance on a girl who had no real prior work experience and got to see me go from a right-wing conservative Republican who would argue both against gay rights and cohabitating to the person I am today. That job meant so much to baby me - it gave me a chance to make my own money, to get out of the house and to meet other people. It was through that job I got to meet my first trans person, and fortunately, I didn't say or do anything (I hope!) that made her feel uncomfortable.

Initially, I thought I read this book in the summer of 2004, but this book was published in 2005 so that means I was likely reading this right up until I got my internship. In those moments when the store was dead, there was nothing to stock or clean or no customers to help (generally the couple of weeks before class and the first two weeks of classes were the busiest times), I was inclined to read the books hidden on the shelves. The first summer of my job in 2003, there was a lit of scifi class going on, and I snuck a read of "We", one of 6 books from that 6-week class and one that my now-oldest friend (we met in a calculus class the winter of 2003) was reading in the class and gushed about. I never ended up finishing that one, though by Jove, I tried. I'm not sure what it was about this book that drew my eye, but I did read it and pretty much gobbled it up. BUT, as luck would have it, I never got a chance to finish this book either, even though I was a hair's breadth from the end. While I have read many many books over the years, books where the only way I remember reading it is from the review I wrote at the time, this story of this woman has stuck with me for years in almost vivid detail. I ended up buying the book at one point in the last 16 years (OMG I AM OLD), but I hadn't gotten around to reading the book I started all those years ago in that college bookstore.

This has been a strange year; I don't get the chance to swap graphic novels with my coworker, and my desire to read has plummeted. I have started and stopped more books than I can count. And yet, I found this book and decided today was the day.

This book is how a young woman made a bunch of decisions that ultimately led her and her 3 under 5 kids to live in a car during a summer. She was too rich for food stamps and too poor for an apartment. She worked her rear off to take care of her family and finally, enough good will came her way for her to scrape out of the bad circumstances.

I gotta hand it to this woman for her "gumption" - I think we can all agree, though, she was still privileged in many, many ways. Kennedy had parents who could send her money (even if they had their own struggles and she refused to tell them how bad things truly were). She didn't live in a city or during the winter months or in a location with extreme heat. She was white, cis-gendered.

But her comments "You have to be rich to be poor" are true. She couldn't afford first and last month's rent (plus deposit) so it's a motel or a campsite...or a car. She didn't have a fridge, so no gallon jugs of milk or eggs or fruit. She was lucky to use her boss's house address and the pub's phone or it would have been potentially worse. And ultimately, she met people, a village, to help her raise her kids - Barb and Lex, who would look out for the kids sleeping in the car, then Diane, who would babysit the 3 kids for a ridiculously low wage, then the land lady, who not only rented out her space to Kennedy and her kids but also offered the two oldest kids odd jobs raking and helping baking.

Kennedy comments that she didn't realize about other resources - a local church, food pantries, assistance for child care and housing - because who really thinks they'll become homeless?

Besides the social commentary, that our society doesn't have near enough available resources to help people get back on their feet, there is a smidgeon of personal responsibility in this as well. This is not me blaming Kennedy for what happened, but I will remark that many of the decisions Kennedy makes were reactionary - being in a relationship with Tom in the first place, marrying Tom to get financial aid, then dropping out of school to take care of the baby, having 3 children in rapid succession, living beyond your means, and then going with her husband (who never really seemed to love her or their kids) to Maine in the first place. I want to be clear: I am not saying that Kennedy was asking for any of this; as teenagers we make stupid decisions all the time and don't really think things ahead. I think a good takeaway from this is to really think about the future before making massive decisions like getting married, having children, going to college, moving or quitting your job.

It is nice to finally know how this book ends. Michelle Kennedy Hogan still writes; you can find an interesting essay she wrote 3 years ago, a poem, a half excerpt of a story from this book as well as read a bit more about the background of this in this interesting interview I dug up (as well as some clarification on the actual locations this book took place) as well as this one. She's written more, especially on Medium, but most of those articles have been deleted.

In Kennedy-Hogan's Wikipedia, it says she had 8 children (OMG!) and continued to write 15 more books. From what I can see, she's lived in Hawaii, where she dried her own cacao beans and also ended up living in a bus, pursuing the minimalist lifestyle. I wish her and her family well and I hope her story helps motivate all of us to continue to push for resources to help the homeless.

[Kristie Burk · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boo! So many reasons why this book FRUSTRATED me.

This isn't a book about homelessness. This is a book about a woman who continually makes bad decisions and puts her children at great risk. She has a college education, but she rarely thinks through situations. For example, why bring all three children apartment hunting when she is continually turned down because of the kids?

The part that got my goat, so to speak, was at the end **SPOILER ALERT** when she gets with a man, quits her steady, well-paying job with benefits and has another baby! And she admits that they are still just a few dollars away from homelessness again. Are you kidding me!?

[Christina · Rating 1 out of 5]

I expected so much from this book, and was so hugely let down.

I was expecting to read the story of a woman who found herself homeless, with no one (and nothing) to turn to. Instead, I found the story of a selfish, proud woman who made a series of very stupid mistakes and then felt like her experience justified a narrative that equated her to other homeless Americans. She DID have a net -- several -- but proudly refused to use them. I found myself terribly frustrated with her and her choices, and tired of how she romanticized the entire situtation. (When I learned she was writing the story six years later, I understood why.)

Don't waste your time with this book. The readers of "Elle Magazine" apparently thought it was good enough for an award, but I don't see how.

Also, all 20 other members of my book club agree with me!

[Jae · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I saw this written about I was very interested, given that I work in affordable housing and housing for the homeless. I saw a lot of talk about how this showed how anybody could become homeless, but reading it that's not really the impression I got. Kennedy is a very good writer, and I think she gave a clear and fairly unflinching account of her circumstances and her thinking throughout. In some ways, however, I think her story indicated that it's really *not* as easy as some of the critics writing about the book implied to become homeless if you're middle class in America. Kennedy's husband decided to move out to the backwoods, and she was a stay-at-home wife with young children and no access to the family money. She went with him, and after a series of terrible events left him and wound up working as a waitress in a resort town for the summer. Once she was working, she could never save up enough money to have a deposit/first month's rent, even if she could have paid rent, and staying in motels just leached away more of anything she could save. (This part was quite realistic -- I think one of the most important things we could do to prevent families falling into homelessness is to provide funds for deposit/first month's rent or rental monies to tide people over during unemployment, etc., instead of basically setting up a system where they have to become homeless, go into shelters, and then get help getting back into housing. It would be more cost-effective, as well as more compassionate, to put more of our resources into prevention). It's pretty clear, however, that Kennedy's family would have disapproved very heavily but would have given her money and/or let her (or at least the kids) move in with them if Kennedy had been up front with them about what was going on. The most infuriating -- although not at all uncommon -- part of the book for me was the end. Kennedy's finally gotten an apartment and a steady job at a credit card company with benefits (and this, I think, illustrated the difference between being middle class and becoming homeless and being poor and homeless -- the ability to get a decent job with benefits. Really, what Kennedy needed was someone to give her three months' rent, some subsidized child care, and help getting basically this job, and she wouldn't have had to be homeless. If she'd known the system better, or if she'd been in a large city as opposed to a small town, she might have gotten that help. Or she might not have.) But then -- then, and seriously, I almost had an aneurysm at this point -- she falls in love with a guy she met at the bar, leaves the apartment to move in with him, and quits her job to become a writer. It was almost unbelievable that after becoming homeless and so miserable basically because she had been jobless and without money and almost completely at the mercy of her first husband's whims, she'd leave her housing and job and basically put herself at the mercy of another man. What if he'd been the nicest guy in the world and he'd gotten hurt? She was the only one who had a job with insurance and she quit it! I mean, I'm glad it worked out for her, but still.

[Honey-Squirrel · Rating 1 out of 5]

Kennedy belongs to the cult of victimhood. The book artlessly documents how her deliberate choices led to unwanted--but not surprising--results. She leaves college, employment, and marriage because she finds them banal. Declares it would "be stupid to get pregnant" when she isn't financially stable, yet goes off the Pill and has one child after another. A dreamer, not a doer, with delusions of grandeur, she only occasionally questions her actions. The title is a misnomer, and the book detracts from the plight of the true homeless without nets.

[Esther · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a quick straight forward account written from the perspective of a woman with a middle class ideology whom, I would argue, belongs to the working class but is prejudiced against it. In her account of beign as a struggling mother who had to live in her car with her children for three months, she relates a strong disposition against the food stamp and section 8 housing program (and in turn, underhandedly, to the people that use these services). Despite the whole ideology bit and the way she differentiates her self from invisible others whom she feels superior to, her story is still admiriable in that she had a strong sence of responsibilty to her children and hope that she will pull through the situation.

This book really makes you think about why it is that some people pull through and other give up and get stuck in a cycle of poverty and the role ideology and race play into all of this. It is interesting to think about race because the setting is new england and there is no person of color in sight. It is interesting to read between the lines and see where their existence is implied.

This is also a goodread because in times of uncertain economic future it is good to read how other people overcome tough situations, its cheesy I know, but you appreciate what you have and what you are working with when you hear about how much worse it could be.

Another issue that is adressed is how our society segregates children from public spaces. Everywhere a young mother goes her children are seen as somewhat of a pest.

A book worth reading because it will stirr up your emotions, you can't help it judge her for her actions and choises but then you realize how real her account is because we all make mistakes and do stupid things at 19 and we all eventually pay the consequences of our actions, yet people should be allowed to redeem themselves.


I recomend it if you are looking for a quick, fast and enjoyable read and you are not afraid to face your own prejudices or have your worldview challenged.

[William Schram · Rating 2 out of 5]

First off, I have to apologize. This book is not terrible, but it made me angry. I should not have looked at the negative reviews before I began this book. It added a bias that otherwise might not have existed.

Without A Net is the story of Michelle Kennedy. She is a middle-class woman with three children. Due to some unfortunate decisions, she becomes homeless.

Now I know this memoir is about Kennedy's struggle and eventual triumph against adversity, but I could not help thinking how stupid this woman is. She marries "Tom" her high school sweetheart because she can't afford college. She finds that she is pregnant, and I believe she drops out of college. She is a housewife for six years. Then Tom quits his job that he hates and wants to live in Northern Maine.

That was when I started skimming the text. Kennedy's parents still care. She is too proud to ask for help. Eventually, she meets another man, and this solves all her problems.

[Lis · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think more Americans need to read books like this (or Ehrenreich's "Nickle & Dimed") - the reality is that security isn't that secure for middle-class America.

However, I really wish Michelle Kennedy was a better writer. Or had a better editor. Sloppy writing detracted from her story (self-deprecation about how well-spoken she is/is not was old by the third time it turned up). It is a super-quick read (a couple hours), and probably worth an afternoon.

And I really wonder if she saw the irony in her decision to quit her job at the credit card company without a plan, given that the same choice (except made by her then-husband) was used to villify the man early in the text and led to the family's move to the backwoods of northern Maine (don't get me wrong - for me, the divorce from him would have come at that moment. I give her props for sticking it out as long as she did)...

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the prologue the author writes, "I had no idea that if I had just walked my agnostic self into a church I could have received help." Yep! I work for a church and can attest -- we love to help individuals/families get back on their feet. We don't expect anything in return. We help because maybe when a person experiences grace they'll be more open to reaching out to God.

This book is about an educated, middle-class woman with three kids who ends up living out of her car for several months. It's a story about slowly trying to build up enough money to rent an apartment, and the challenges one faces in that transitional period. Interesting and quick read.

[Jene · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in a day and found it much more interesting than the last memoir I read - The Glass Castle.

Sadly, this story is not unique. The hidden homeless are all around us.

[Marilee · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author of this book is so right that we need a better safety net for people who need a fresh start, people who are trying to get out of difficult situations. I really wanted to like this book, but I found it a little hard to read at times, probably because it was a true accounting of someone in this kind of situation. The author truly makes an effort to sustain a job while finding housing and taking care of her three small children, but she also makes a series of poor choices that just make things harder, and that's what made it hard to read. I have no idea what I would have done in her situation,

[Krissy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book, but I have to say that some of the things the author said made me a little mad. I understand all about going through hard times, but for me, I think I would put my pride away and ask my parents for help before I let my three kids live out of a car. Unless her parents were the kind of people who wouldn't help her at all, and from reading the book, they didn't strike me as those kind of people at all. I'm happy for her that she eventually pulled herself out of the hole she was in and can provide a good life for her and her children. It just seemed like once in a while, she would make a statement that sounded extremely selfish. It wasn't my book so I don't have it with me, otherwise I would include an example, but I can't remember any off the top of my head. I'm giving it three stars because it was a good story, all in all.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Michelle Kennedy became homeless and ended up living in her car with three small children after she separated from her husband. Like everyone, she made some bad choices. But she was extremely clever and used a lot of ingenuity taking care of her children, providing food and clothing, despite her situation. Kennedy writes with a lot of honesty and integrity of her triumph over her hardships. It's unfortunate how many people in our society find themselves in similar situations.

[Leslie Fitzgerald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Picked this up in a bookstore around 2007 and it was one of the best things I have ever done! Being a young, married mother, it made me understand that a few bad decisions could really change my whole life. It really taught me how to survive if I ever become homeless with my children. Is the writing perfect? No. Is it her fault she got into this situation? Yes. Is it an inspiration to those who struggle to make ends meet? Absolutely!

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unbelievable to hear this true story about being a mom with 3 kids and finding yourself homeless. These are the type of homeless people I wish I could help!

[Abby · Rating 3 out of 5]

The more I can learn about people's experiences of homelessness the better--I am grateful everyday for my home.

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quick read on a situation that we could all be in one day. Glad to have read this

[Stacy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A really quick read from a woman who has an interesting story and a gift for writing and optomism.

[CTEP]

This month I wanted to read a book about homelessness to follow up with Nickel and Dimed. Once again, I am a sucker for memoirs so I chose one called “Without a Net.” Michelle Kennedy writes about her short period of homelessness with three kids, where she fell from being a middle class housewife to living in her car and waitressing at night. Michelle attended college for one year before finding the love of her life, and dropped out shortly after, eager to start a family. They have three kids and are together for about five years. Michelle’s husband dreams of escaping the rat race and living off the land and a life in the woods. Together they uproot their family and live in a cabin in Maine. With no running water or heat, this life begins to wear on Michelle, and she ultimately ends up leaving her husband. Without job experience or working skills, Michelle doesn’t know where to start to fend for her now family of four, but seems to easily land a job waitressing within a few days of moving. However, acquiring the first and last month’s rent to get an apartment is an issue, and Michelle is too embarrassed to ask her family for help. She eventually saves enough to get an apartment and her life improves from there. Though Michelle’s homelessness was relatively short compared to what it could have been (around 7 months) she faced struggles in acquiring an apartment and government aid. She never would have guessed she would have been homeless, but her story shows it can happen to the best of us, and once one falls down it can be even harder to get back up.

This relates to my experience because as AmeriCorps members, we get a little taste of poverty. I think it is important for people to have empathy and realize that homelessness can happen to anyone, and many of our clients may have been through this experience. I found this book interesting because though Michelle was struggling, she would not ask for help. She struggled to get government aid because she would not admit she was homeless. It made me wonder if this is a rare occurrence or a common one, and made me think about how navigating aid can be a barrier for some people.

This book was an enjoyable read, though sometimes it felt more like a romance novel than a memoir about homelessness. I wouldn’t say it is a must read, but if other CTEP members are looking for a light read about serious issues, as odd as that may sound, this book somehow encapsulates both.

[Jessie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very clear cut, straightforward account of a middle class mother who becomes homeless and must live out of her car with her three children. It’s interesting because it is fairly clear that she maintains a prejudice against many other impoverished people in similar situations of homelessness. Her tone regarding food stamps and the section 8 housing program makes this pretty clear and definitely suggests she might look down her nose at other people who actually use those services. However, it’s a bit vague on whether this was a bias she has since learned to actively challenge. Despite her opinions or intentions, this manages to showcase incredibly well how flawed this system is.

I fell down a bit of a rabbit hole of negative reviews for this as well. There’s a lot of people rating this low coming off as “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” types of people, often referencing that she is only to blame and that she should have never let it get to the point that her kids were in those conditions. But it’s clear to me that Michelle never claims at any point that she made good decisions or that she was content with her homelessness. In fact, the prologue she refers to her descent into homelessness as “a series of bad judgement calls and wrong decisions” and she regularly blames herself for their situation. Do I think I would’ve made the same decisions in her situation? Or even gotten to that point in the first place? No. But I’ve also never even been close to needing to make those types of decisions. I don’t think she’s a bad mother. The bottom line is that she did the best for her kids in the only way she knew how and my opinions on her actions are irrelevant.

I’m not sure I love her style of writing but the story is worth reading. Especially as we enter a recession and a housing crisis and more and more people are pulled into a cycle of poverty that will be increasingly more difficult to break.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

A modern life of a young woman with three children in the US who fights through the social consequences of poverty and failed welfare program. What’s different about Michelle’s memoir is that she explains homelessness from a different perspective. The common narrative of homeless people ending up where they are because of their mental health and substance abuse does not apply to her. She comes from a stable family, and she found herself in that situation after dropping out of college and separating from her unsupportive husband. Jobs for those without certain qualifications are often underpaid manual labor, and this is still happening today. Getting paid $2/hr for waitressing is absurd, considering high rent and other living expenses. Clearly there is a large discrepancy between wages and rent that further impacts low-income population, forcing them to live in harsh conditions, like sleeping in the car, struggling in finding childcare, etc. Michelle is a strong mother and a woman who did the right thing for her family, even though she often found herself feeling guilty, depressed, hopeless, and anxious about her day to day life while caring for her kids. Homelessness shouldn’t be stigmatized because that only worsens the problem. We need people like Michelle to join forces with politicians, public health officials, and the community to end this cycle of American poverty.

[Kristen · Rating 1 out of 5]

"Without a Net: Middle Class and Homeless with Kids in America." I am going to go ahead and blame this ostentatious title for creating a completely inaccurate set of expectations for the reader. If I had understood from the beginning that this was an amateur first-person story that remains mired in the author's tiny world instead of offering broader insights that are suggested by the title...I might have been less disappointed. Still, there are no meaningful self-reflections, insights, or meaningful transformations. It's a couple hundred pages of this happened, that happened.
All things considered, the ill-fitting title reflects, generally, my feeling on the entire work - disconnected and overly dramatic.

[Michelle Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, what can I say. It's a quick read. And I've read every incarnation of this book. It started out as a novel because I was too embarrassed that it actually was me. But then my agent said to rewrite it true and so I did. Am I mortified that I let myself get to that corner? Sure. I was. I'm not so much now. What I know is this. I truly fought every step of the way to figure it out. I still am - 28 years later. But, if you want to know how to do it all wrong and still have a pretty interesting life anyway - it's a good overview of how things can go wrong very quickly and without planning. It's also a testament, I think, in my chronic cheerfulness and ability to get out of any hole I put myself in. And I have. Over and over again.

-Best Wishes, Warmest Regards
Michelle

[Karen Sturzenacker · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book was okay - and a fast read as others have noted - but it is hard to feel bad for someone who makes bad decision after bad decision. I'm not sure she was actually asking readers to feel bad for her so I will cut her some slack on that.

By the time she pulled herself together and began working steadily, it was too late and she and her 3 kids lived in her car for several months. She finally gets a place and a steadier job at which she excels - and has benefits such as insurance - and quits because she feels morally bankrupt. I can appreciate that, but risking going back to the streets again is yet another bad decision.

[Phil Cornell · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author flees a dispiriting, potentially dangerous marriage with their three children and finds herself living out of a car with them for three months. Her once-promising future in tatters, Kennedy tells of the constant struggle to stay afloat while plagued by self-doubt, striving to put a roof over all their heads. She discovers a support system and eventually much more while working at a local bar. The quickly happy ending and vague role of her estranged husband undercut the impact. Kennedy admits she “was really only a passing visitor to the vast land that is homelessness.” For a deeper look at the issue, read Brian Goldstone’s superb “There Is No Place for Us.”

[Megan Vaughn · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting (and quick) read. Unlike others reviews, I feel like Michelle owned her mistakes and bad decisions and did not really have a victim mentality at all. She just seemed to be honest about her emotions at the time and that was it.

Overall I thought the story was well-written but a little romanticized. Not that I find this overly surprising, as she wrote this book several years later, and could see how being removed from her experiences allowed her to reflect on the positive outcomes.

[Diana · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh my gosh, lady! I just DON'T CARE! I'm not trying to put down what she went through, but she just came across as a a spoiled little thing who walked around saying, "Woe is me!" the whole time. I was SO over her by about the third chapter. For a woman with kids to behave that way...yeah. Look, I know homelessness happens to a lot of good people, and many of them with families. But I felt like this one didn't even try.

Wish I hadn't wasted my time on this one.

[Jen Hyatt · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short tale about a summer spent homeless. After leaving her deadbeat husband, 24 yr. old Kennedy lived out of her car, with her three small children, scraping by and waiting tables while saving for an apartment. Numerous readers on this platform have derided Kennedy for her “bad decisions,” but teenagers/young adults aren’t particularly known for making good decisions. If anything, her story illustrates how it could happen to any of us.

[Stephanie Danielle · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book got on my nerves. She had plenty of nets she just wasn't smart enough to use any of them. There's something dishonest about the story. Almost like anything shitty that she did during that time she decided to leave out of the book. Anyway that's my two cents and she can have it. I am glad the story had a happy ending for the children. Everybody deserves a home and food on their plates.

[Alice · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is as relevant as it ever been was in 2005, you could definitely call it timeless.
Homelessness can happen to most any of us. Michelle Kennedy not only wrote this book but told the story of her becoming homeless, sleeping in the with her three children and miraculously working her way out of it. This is a beautiful book.