Sol is injured in a riot at the demonstration, becomes bedridden, catches pneumonia, and dies. He joins a march to protest the overturning of a legislative bill that supports family planning, and joins a group that supports population control as humanity's hope of survival. Meanwhile, Sol decides he can no longer remain passive in the face of humanity's growing crisis. He decides to return to his family, believing the police will have lost interest in him. Here, Peter's stoic acceptance of events frustrates Billy. Later they find a new home in a discarded car whose previous owner froze to death. Soon they are attacked by a small group of homeless people and forced to leave their location. To evade capture, Billy leaves the part of the city to which he is accustomed, eventually breaking into the abandoned Brooklyn Navy Yard, where he comes to live with Peter, a fatalist hermit eagerly awaiting the new millennium as the end of the world.

He becomes obsessed with capturing Billy Chung.

His irritability and shame for the life he has given Shirl distances him from her. Andy attempts to investigate Mike's death, but he is distracted by riots, paperwork, and the spreading of the undermanned police force to its limit this makes him irritable. Shirl becomes disappointed with their impoverished lifestyle. Afterwards Shirl moves in with Andy and Sol. During this month they both live there in luxury. He ensures that she is permitted to stay in the apartment until the end of the month. While Andy investigates the murder, he becomes enamored of Shirl. Billy leaves the apartment but hides in the basement, and then later breaks back in for theft. He delivers his message to a rich racketeer named 'Big Mike' and sees Shirl, Mike's concubine. His first delivery takes him into a semi-fortified apartment block, complete with the rare luxuries of air conditioning and running water for showers. One of the looters, Billy Chung, a desperately poor boy, grabs a box of soylent steaks which he sells to fund himself as a messenger-boy. Andy finds that the shop is under attack and being looted. Pandemonium starts when a nearby food shop has a sale on 'soylent' (soy and lentil) steaks. When Andy queues for their continually reducing water ration he witnesses a public speech by the 'Eldsters', people 65 years and older forcibly retired from work. Police detective Andy Rusch lives in half a room, sharing it with Sol, a retired engineer who has adapted a bicycle generator to power an old television set and a refrigerator. Make Room! Make Room! is set in an overpopulated New York City of 1999 (thirty-three years later than the time of writing).

Make room make room by harry harrison