How do you establish a sense of home when you’re forced to move from place to place? Paula Vogel’s The Mother Play: A Play in Five Evictions spans 40 years and five apartments as Phyllis and her children, Carl and Martha, relocate throughout the DMV. Although they never leave the state of Maryland, they find themselves vulnerable to the intersecting forces of socio-political movements, shifting economic roles, and government expansion, all of which make secure housing both accessible and elusive as time moves past them.
Vogel begins her play in 1964, the year President Lyndon B. Johnson famously declared a "War on Poverty." Nearly 20% of Americans were living below the poverty line, and many were single-parent households. As divorce rates rose and workplace discrimination persisted, single mothers struggled to balance the demands of childcare and economic survival. Federal employment offered one beacon of hope: new jobs in public assistance and federal research drew workers to DC, but housing in the city was expensive. Many new workers settled in neighboring states, residing in Maryland’s Prince George’s County and Montgomery County, close enough to commute, but far enough to find more affordable rent.
The 1960s also marked the height of the Civil Rights Movement, which pushed the federal government to address housing segregation and inner-city decline. As predominately white neighborhoods in DC, Prince George's County, and Montgomery County began the slow process of integration, white flight surged. Counties closer to DC began to urbanize, creating new housing zones to meet this growing demand. This era also sparked momentum for other rights movements: workers' rights, disability justice, LGBTQ+ liberation, and more. The ways communities viewed themselves and broader societal thoughts on who to include in those communities were shifting rapidly.
In the 1970s, the Women’s Liberation Movement (also known as Second Wave Feminism) challenged deeply rooted inequalities in the workplace. Activists fought for stronger protections for pregnant workers and more equitable divorce laws. “No fault” divorce litigation swept across the states, making it easier for couples to separate—particularly women who had previously needed to prove neglect or abuse to a court to have a judge grant them the permission to divorce. Divorce rates increased throughout the decade, plateauing in the 1980s. Meanwhile, despite economic turmoil and job insecurity in the face of the Great Inflation of the 1970s, the cost of living in Prince George’s County and Montgomery County doubled compared to the 1950s. People were moving to cities like Silver Spring, Takoma Park, and Hyattsville in droves.
As the federal government worked to cut costs, it began decentralizing operations, relocating the headquarters of various agencies into Maryland and Virginia as the United States began a shift towards privatization of the public sector throughout the 1980s and ’90s. Maryland and Virginia also had the space to accommodate the construction of new government buildings. This shift brought new jobs and continued to pull people into commuter counties. High-rise apartment buildings became increasingly common, offering more units in less space. For many families, these shifts offered both the hope of new jobs and the looming threat of being priced out of their homes.
By the 1980s, white flight from D.C. had reached its peak, with the city’s white population dropping nearly 20% since the ’60s. Many white families resettled in Montgomery County, where housing costs doubled yet again. Women continued making major gains in the workforce, holding over 42% of jobs nationwide by 1980. But 1981 brought the beginnings of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which rapidly became a destabilizing force for communities and disproportionately impacted racial and sexual minorities.
Within the DMV, gentrification and displacement had left marginalized Washingtonians and Marylanders with unstable housing and little access to healthcare. This caused the virus to spread rapidly throughout DC’s marginalized communities. From 1980 to 1991, one in every 57 DC men were diagnosed with AIDS. As the crisis progressed, healthcare became an urgent priority for federal intervention, stalling plans to build and refurbish communities in need. LGBTQ+ affirming spaces became targets of “urban renewal”—with this aggressive redevelopment fueled by the false stigma that HIV/AIDS was strictly a “gay disease”. Housing discrimination became more intense for LGBTQ+ renters, and people identified as HIV-positive risked evictions from landlords and family members.
The HIV/AIDS epidemic reworked social attitudes around community development, as fears of illness enabled puritanical ideals of monogamy and sexual purity to become requirements for social acceptance. Destigmatizing the virus required massive outreach. DC-based organizations like Whitman Walker Health created programs to spread informative resources for those impacted by HIV and AIDS; the DC organizations like the DC Coalition of Black Gays and Us Helping Us organized outreach into DC’s Black communities; Food & Friends organized to deliver meals and groceries to people isolated from their families and communities due to their HIV/AIDS status.
Throughout the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, finding a home in the DMV required more than signing a lease. The rapid shifts in the social landscape, political atmosphere, and financial opportunity created moving targets of affluence and acceptance for natives and transplants alike. For Carl, Martha, and Phyllis, the shifts are epic and intimate, as the socio-political landscape shifts their ideas of who and where home is.
—Nayanna Simone