With inflation and housing costs rising at the fastest rate in a half-century, economically vulnerable communities across America are struggling more than ever to secure decent housing and stable jobs. This project, Slay by Stay, follows the life of a single mother of two in New York’s Public Housing, Fantasia McLean, 28, who dreams of beating the odds – and hoisting her family into the middle class through entrepreneurship and sheer grit.
In 2018, Fantasia and her four-year-old daughter moved from a homeless shelter in Queens to the West Red Hook Houses in Brooklyn. Faced with the pressures of raising two children, Fantasia transformed her one-bedroom apartment in public housing into a hair salon. Clients daily drop by for French weaves, plait braids and conversation. Her two children run around the kitchen floors strewn with extensions. Webcams stream Fantasia’s work straight onto Tik Tok, where she has more than ten thousand fans who follow her brand, Slay by Stay. She hosts elaborate fashion shows in the housing project’s courtyard. Fantasia has only one goal with her brand: afford to leave public housing.
“As long as I have a comb, $20 dollars for hair extensions, I can make $100 a day,” says Fantasia.
While there have been documentary projects about the conditions in public housing, this project, about the entrepreneurial ambitions of a queer, single mother, is an intimate look, not just at lower- and middle-class struggle, but it’s a story of hope, ambition, family life and an incredibly spirited young woman.
But it’s hard to say whether the story ends with Fantasia succeeding. Undergoing the financial pressures of New York, Fantasia and her two daughters recently began splitting their time between Fantasia’s girlfriend’s home in Tennessee and her apartment in Brooklyn. This project will enable me to bring the story to its rightful conclusion: will the mother ever afford to leave Public Housing?
“Slay By Stay” is a microcosm of what is happening on a national scale: the Consumer Price Index for urban consumers increased 9.1 percent. Low-income families can’t postpone to buy necessities and are unable to fight back against the rising cost of life in New York and their overwhelming circumstances.