Act 1, Scenes 1—7

Habitat begins in a hospital room with Raine talking to her mother, Cath, who is too weak to speak because she is dying of cancer. Raine tells Cath she is going to take her bank card. Then Raine experiences a sort of trance in which she remembers when she almost died as a baby because Cath failed to bring her to the hospital soon enough. Cath then wakes up, but Raine leaves to meet her friends.

In the next scene, Lewis Chance introduces himself to the community in a high school auditorium, explaining that he is opening a group home on the prosperous suburban street Mapleview Lanes that will be full of children that everyone has "failed." In scene 3, Janet breaks into her mother's house because Margaret will not answer the door, they have a fight, and Janet leaves.

Raine meets Margaret by accident in...