Stories from Our Tenants Downstairs follows nine different tenants in the Banneker Homes, a low-income housing project in Harlem, where the tenants face both internal struggles among each other, and endure a shared anxiety of their neighbourhood's looming gentrification. There is Swan in apartment 6R, whose excitement about his friend's return from prison jeopardises the straight life he's been trying to lead. Mimi, in apartment 14D, hustles to raise the child she had with Swan, while waitressing at Roscoe's and doing hair on the side. Quanneisha B. Miles, a former gymnast with a good education, would prefer to leave Banneker in her past, but cannot escape the building's pull. These people, and many others, overlap into each other's lives (and stories), in ways that force readers to root for them, despite the unbelievable odds they face to capture their dreams or run away from their pasts.