Dispossessed

The homeless still live under the El tracks above Cermak Road, battling the bitter elements as they did in Algren's day, and Sandburg's before that. Their squalor, hopelessness, and defeat, and society's indifference, never seem to change. Today a lonely man struggles in sleep in his makeshift hovel atop a once-white couch now dingy with grime and soaked with rain, with the couch remarkably having a complementary loveseat of similarly deplorable condition. He essentially has a discarded family room all of his own, which would be abhorred by you and me but at least keeps him off of the cold, damp ground at night.

All that has seemingly changed since Algren is the distance between top and bottom, and the quality of what the top throws away.