What strategy did Oluo’s mother use to make ends meet before applying for public housing and what happened to render that strategy ineffective?

For a while, Oluo’s single mother kept food on the table by taking roommates into the family’s apartment. They lived with another single mother and her two small children, which helped everyone pay the rent and keep the utilities on. One day, though, Oluo’s mother came home to find the mother beating her five-year-old child in the head with a plastic baseball bat. Oluo skims over the incident’s aftermath, though she says that after the police left, the family knew they would have to find another way to pay the bills.