Gender, Power, and Alternative Living Arrangements in the Inner-City Crack Culture

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Abstract
Impoverished crack-abusing women are usually without a regular place to live, sleep, relax, bathe, eliminate, eat, and store possessions—but most are not homeless persons on the streets because they find alternative living arrangements. This article draws from a rich descriptive repository of field notes, field diaries, and transcribed tape-recorded interviews from two ethnographic studies in New York City, focused upon crack users and sellers. The most common alternative living arrangement was for women to live in the household of an older male with a dependable income for a period of time. Women typically provided the men with sex, drugs, cash (less often), domestic service, or companionship. Several women lived in freakhouses (locales where several women entertained sexual customers and shared crack or other drugs) but tried to avoid crack houses or shooting galleries as residential locations. These alternative living arrangements reflected the women's powerlessness and the high levels of sexual exploitation and degradation of women in the inner-city crack culture.