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There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
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About This Book
Through the unforgettable 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 AmericaThe 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 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.
Reviews
"In illustrating how homelessness is skyrocketing in the richest country in the world, Goldstone has accomplished an incredible feat."
"But it should change how Americans see each other and themselves, or at least our assumptions about what hard work gets you."
"He trains an empathetic eye on families that are struggling in an increasingly gentrified city that prizes property above people."
"The reader is made aware of the complexity and severity of the problems of those living on the edges of society."
"There Is No Place for Us is effective in building sympathy for the plight of families who are struggling to afford housing, especially in growing cities such as Atlanta, but falls short in suggesting what might help them or what they could realistically do to improve their own prospects."
"It's a revelatory and gut-wrenching exploration of an often-ignored homeless population that is key to understanding poverty in America ..."
"Goldstone is challenging how we have historically defined and stereotyped homelessness in our country, who gets counted, who gets left out, and why."
"By compassionately telling these families' stories and excavating the systemic forces behind their housing insecurity, There Is No Place for Us shifts the paradigm on homelessness, revealing how America's disinvestment in public housing and relentless pursuit of free-market growth has come at the terrible expense of poor working families ..."
"Offers an immersive narrative of how five Atlanta families found themselves in the direst of straits yet statistically invisible ..."
"It's a gripping, high-stakes account of America's housing emergency."
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