There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America
ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES AND THE ATLANTIC’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR • Through the “revelatory and gut-wrenching” (Associated Press) stories of five Atlanta families, this landmark work of journalism exposes a new and troubling trend—the dramatic rise of the working homeless in cities across America.
“An exceptional feat of reporting, full of an immediacy that calls to mind Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s Random Family and Matthew Desmond’s Evicted.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)
FINALIST FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, The Washington Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Elle, New America, BookPage, Shelf Awareness
The working homeless. In a country where hard work and determination are supposed to lead to success, there is something scandalous about this phrase. But skyrocketing rents, low wages, and a lack of tenant rights have produced a startling phenomenon: People with full-time jobs cannot keep a roof over their head, especially in America’s booming cities, where rapid growth is leading to catastrophic displacement. These families are being forced into homelessness not by a failing economy but a thriving one.
In this gripping and deeply reported book, Brian Goldstone plunges readers into the lives of five Atlanta families struggling to remain housed in a gentrifying, increasingly unequal city. Maurice and Natalia make a fresh start in the country’s “Black Mecca” after being priced out of DC. Kara dreams of starting her own cleaning business while mopping floors at a public hospital. Britt scores a coveted housing voucher. Michelle is in school to become a social worker. Celeste toils at her warehouse job while undergoing treatment for ovarian cancer. Each of them aspires to provide a decent life for their children—and each of them, one by one, joins the ranks of the nation’s working homeless.
Through intimate, novelistic portraits, Goldstone reveals the human cost of this crisis, following parents and their kids as they go to sleep in cars, or in squalid extended-stay hotel rooms, and head out to their jobs and schools the next morning. These are the nation’s hidden homeless—omitted from official statistics, and proof that overflowing shelters and street encampments are only the most visible manifestation of a far more pervasive problem.
By turns heartbreaking and urgent, There Is No Place for Us illuminates the true magnitude, causes, and consequences of the new American homelessness—and shows that it won’t be solved until housing is treated as a fundamental human right.
“An exceptional feat of reporting, full of an immediacy that calls to mind Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s Random Family and Matthew Desmond’s Evicted.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)
FINALIST FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, The Washington Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Elle, New America, BookPage, Shelf Awareness
The working homeless. In a country where hard work and determination are supposed to lead to success, there is something scandalous about this phrase. But skyrocketing rents, low wages, and a lack of tenant rights have produced a startling phenomenon: People with full-time jobs cannot keep a roof over their head, especially in America’s booming cities, where rapid growth is leading to catastrophic displacement. These families are being forced into homelessness not by a failing economy but a thriving one.
In this gripping and deeply reported book, Brian Goldstone plunges readers into the lives of five Atlanta families struggling to remain housed in a gentrifying, increasingly unequal city. Maurice and Natalia make a fresh start in the country’s “Black Mecca” after being priced out of DC. Kara dreams of starting her own cleaning business while mopping floors at a public hospital. Britt scores a coveted housing voucher. Michelle is in school to become a social worker. Celeste toils at her warehouse job while undergoing treatment for ovarian cancer. Each of them aspires to provide a decent life for their children—and each of them, one by one, joins the ranks of the nation’s working homeless.
Through intimate, novelistic portraits, Goldstone reveals the human cost of this crisis, following parents and their kids as they go to sleep in cars, or in squalid extended-stay hotel rooms, and head out to their jobs and schools the next morning. These are the nation’s hidden homeless—omitted from official statistics, and proof that overflowing shelters and street encampments are only the most visible manifestation of a far more pervasive problem.
By turns heartbreaking and urgent, There Is No Place for Us illuminates the true magnitude, causes, and consequences of the new American homelessness—and shows that it won’t be solved until housing is treated as a fundamental human right.
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Community Reviews
This is an infuriating book, simply because it refuses to look away from an infuriating reality. You really follow these working families as they struggle to get a foothold. Again and again, there will be some moment of hope—a job possibility, a housing lead, a bureaucratic breakthrough. And again and again, it will turn out to be fleeting, ephemeral, or altogether illusory. You know how they say that moving is one of the most stressful events you can go through—especially with children? These are families who, through little or no fault of their own, are in a constant state of either just-moved or about-to-move—if they’re lucky (and they’re not just being chucked out with no place to land at all). It’s exhausting, which is precisely how it should feel.
The families Goldstone follows are certainly distinct, with their own personalities and circumstances, but there’s so much overlap in their struggles that you have to recognize the structural nature of their situation. These are not a few isolated misfortunes, and their decisions are not what ultimately determine how things will turn out for them. It would probably be much simpler to describe such systemic forces in the abstract, but Goldstone instead tells very close stories. We’re given an intimate look at day-to-day occurrences and seemingly small decisions that end up having enormous consequences—negotiations & calculations over which bills to pay or which programs to apply for, trade-offs around childcare, etc. It was not easy to read, but certainly sustained my empathy for the families he’s following, which is critical in shaping my sense of the issues at hand. You’re not as likely to judge someone harshly for a poor decision when you’re so impressed they’re even staying afloat.
I came away with a much sharper sense not of “homelessness” per se, but of the liminal space between getting by and not getting by. I’ve obviously never been in favor of gentrification, but I had no idea the immense pressure that it puts on the housing market, and not accidentally—as he says, “gentrification is purposeful and produced.” I also hadn’t been aware of the massive corporate interests that have grown to exploit these incredibly vulnerable people. To quote again: “Homelessness has become big business.” It’s sobering, and painful to read, and irrefutable.
I do respect Goldstone’s decision not to invent hopeful solutions, though it certainly didn’t make it an easy read. He’s utterly clear about our need to start treating housing as an essential public good, and he does make reference to some potential reforms (“social housing,” e.g.) that might alleviate the situation. But there’s no varnish being applied, right up to the end. Fair enough.
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