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The Doors

Toni Schlesinger, the author of Five Flights Up, has spent the last year visiting and photographing the homes of people who have been hit by the economic crash—people who lost their money, their savings, their terrors, their dream-lives, and their pluck. Step inside their lives with "House Calls."

Behind these doors lives a very thrifty family.

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The Family

Stephanie Cherry, a social worker specializing in post-traumatic stress disorder, Robert Hansen, a gift officer at a foundation for New York’s poor, and their son Luca in their apartment in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. Annick, their daughter, is napping in the other room. Stephanie is about to give birth to a third child.

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The Love

Rob and Stephanie fell into each other’s arms at McGill in Montreal. It was a meeting of like minds. Rob: “We’re pretty financially conservative. It comes from our backgrounds. My mother raised me. I grew up on public assistance at certain points. I was never hungry, but we struggled a lot. It’s made me aware of the need to have enough so you can protect your family, to stave off all the things that can happen.”

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The Towels

Then they got married.
Stephanie: “We’ve always been thrifty. While everybody was maxing out their credit cards, we were doing the opposite. Other people are beginning to do what we’ve been doing forever. We don’t have cable.” Rob: “Though last fall, we got to the point where we couldn’t cut out any more.”

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The Saver

Rob: “Seven years ago when we were saving for a house, we had a challenge.” They had just downsized, and moved to this apartment from a 2,000-square-foot house in Red Hook. The challenge?
Stephanie: “We had $0 days.”
Rob: “It’s partly the recession, but we want the children to go to a bilingual school, French and English. We’re both part French-Canadian. We had to move districts.”

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The Wonder

Rob: “When the movers were here, I got them water. They said, ‘We don’t drink tap water.’”
Stephanie: “The idea of $0 days was to go as many consecutive days without spending money. That didn’t include groceries. But we couldn’t buy lunch, coffee, or newspapers.”

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The Knowing

Stephanie: “Now it’s become more of a lifestyle. I still bring instant coffee to work. We don’t buy books. We go to the library. In the fall, we concluded we’re not going out to dinner. We’re looking at car vacations this year.”
Rob: “We ran some numbers— with air, hotel food, it comes out to $4,000, $5,000 a week. But a car vacation and a state park—$600 for a cabin. We’ll probably share with another family. Could be $300 for the cabin.”

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The Pig

Toni: “Do you ever really let loose?”
Stephanie: “We went to a Korean spa.”
Robert: “In Fort Lee, New Jersey.”
Toni: “For the day?”
Stephanie: “Half.”