No Hope for the Children of There Are No Children HereHenry Horner Homes, an inner-city housing project, is the setting in which the story of two boys growing up in the American city center occurs. The story follows the River family, particularly the two middle kids, Lafeyette and Pharoah, focusing on times plagued by drugs, death, gangs and poverty. The author describes how devastating life in the city center is for a family, but especially for children. Public housing estates were seen as pleasant places. When the boys' mother, LaJoe, first moved to Horner, she was thirteen. The houses had freshly painted white walls, new linoleum floors, closets you could hide in, and brand new appliances. The children danced in the basement, belonged to the Girl Scouts, and played outside in the yard surrounded by newly planted grass. All this harmonious spectacle ended abruptly. The housing authority had neither the money nor the interest to invest in the projects. They did not have much concern for low-income families and, therefore, the projects were neglected. The smell in the apartments had become so strong that people thought dead fetuses were being flushed down the toilets. Appliances in the apartments almost never worked, so cooking was limited. After an inspection of the basement, over 2,000 new and used appliances were found covered in rats, animal carcasses and droppings. Dead animals, accessories and women's underwear explained the persistent odor in the apartments. Life in urban centers is full of glimmers of hope. The children hoped to leave the terrible streets of the ghetto and move to an innovative and better place. There are times when Lafayette states: ... in the middle of the paper ... their mothers get pregnant, usually, with a different father for each child. Kotlowitz does a great job describing how demoralizing life in the ghetto really is. Showing what the children in the book go through, Kotlowitz remains very neutral. It indulges the thoughts, fears and hopes of inner-city children who are not normally exposed to those who do not live in these circumstances. Lafayette and Pharoah are just two of the thousands of children suffering in these disturbing conditions. The Chicago Housing Authority stepped in and cleaned up the buildings, but without accessible money, not much can be done. Children born into poverty cannot overcome their situation unless they are given the means and opportunities to do so. Works Cited: Kotlowitz, Alex. There are no children here. New York: Double Day.1991.