The focus of interests and goals in relation to housing vary by social status even within the large group of families called working class. The most disadvantaged groups are concerned with shelter per se; traditional working class families with opportunities to elaborate their dwellings in personally expressive ways; and the more prosperous modern working class with buying the “standard all-American package.” The lower class seeks shelter from a wide variety of human and nonhuman threats, from which they fear consequences that combine elements of physical threat, disruption of familial and other interpersonal relations. and threats of moral damage to the self. This bears implications for the design of public housing.