At the beginning of the play, Hansberry describes the Younger family apartment as a place that “would be a comfortable and well-ordered room if it were not for a number of indestructible contradictions to this state of being” (3). The worn-out furniture has “clearly had to accommodate the living of too many people for too many years” (3), although it was once “actually selected with care and love and even hope—and brought to this apartment and arranged with taste and pride. […] Weariness has, in fact, won in this room” (3). Additionally, “the sole natural light the family may enjoy in the course of the day is only that which fights its way” (3) through a tiny window in the kitchen. The apartment has far outlived its original purpose, which was as a transitionary home for the newly-married Mama and Walter Sr., who planned to buy their own home within a year. Now, the place serves as cramped housing for the family but falls short of being a home.

The family shares a bathroom with the family next door, denying them agency over their own bodily functions as they must negotiate and apportion out the times when they can use the toilet or bathe.