when you're down on your luck

This is the There-But-For-Fortune flophouse, a place to hang your hat when all systems fail. It sits across the street from Camilla's house, and it is fascinating to watch the black-and-white parade of prostitutes, addicts, ordinary old people, police, ambulance drivers and mysterious strangers come and go. They watch us, too. One helps direct my parking as I back into the lot. (Backing not my forte.) "She have the baby yet?" another asks.
  Lives are lived out in the street—the phone calls arranging to meet johns at a certain parking lot, the drug deals, the domestic disagreements shouted from curb to window. They do all the same things we do—be born, grow up, pair up, have babies, buy microwaves, party, break up, die—only louder, faster, more desperately and in a Rhode Island accent.