One of the myths that we cherish in America is that the people who are homeless don't work. If they did they wouldn't be homeless. Right? In There Is No Place For Us: Working and Homeless in America Brian Goldstone decisively refutes this notion.
About seven years ago Goldstone interviewed a woman who, with her children, had been homeless for months. Their ordeal had started with a letter from her landlord. The area was gentrifying. She was going to sell. They were kicked out of a second rental, again through no fault of their own when code enforcement condemned it. An extended-stay hotel was too expensive. They had nowhere to go.
The woman had a full time job as a home health aid.
After his article was published in 2019 Goldstone couldn't stop thinking about the family. Was their experience an anomaly or part of a much bigger picture?
"I realized that the problem was much bigger than this particular city. I started seeing it everywhere. In Northern California I visited 'safe parking lots' full of working families living in their cars and minivans. I talked to a shelter director who explained that more than half of the people his organization served were employed in low-wage jobs."
Goldstone's epiphany resulted in There Is No Place For Us. In this highly readable book he focuses on the plights of five working parent families who tried their best to play by the rules. They are the bricks with background scholarship as the cement. If you're anything like me their stories will engage and trouble you. You might realize how easily that could have been you or a treasured friend or family member. (See purrrsonal note.)
How did the families become homeless. Sometimes it was through individual circumstances beyond their control. When a landlord decides to sell there often aren't affordable alternatives. One family's descent began when their rental home was torched.
But more often it's something systemic. Gentrification is big driver. When rich usually white people "discover" a usually black neighborhood and start descending on it in predatory droves landlords are only too willing to sell out. One city, wanting an improved image prior to hosting the Olympics, purposefully demolished its public housing projects.
Government vouchers which cap the percentage of a family's income that must be spent on rent have been touted as a safety measure. And in the past they served that purpose for the few that could get them. But today landlords either won't take them or charge so much their properties are not options.
Homelessness is defined officially in a way that severely underestimates its prevalence, therefore denying many people much needed help. If only people actually sleeping on the street or under bridges or occupying shelters are counted the legions of families doubling up with friends or family members, sleeping in cars, and trapped in other way less than desirable situations are shit out of luck.
And there are lots of people making money off this crisis. An example cited frequently in the book of the predatory long term residence hotels that charge so much for a substandard (often mold and vermin infested) room that a family can't save enough to move out. It's the 21st century version of the company store.
Goldstone tells readers that the rapidly escalating American homelessness epidemic can be turned around, as it has been in countries that have conceptualized safe housing as a basic human right. In a stirring last paragraph he urges this nation to do the right thing.
"Our cities are on a perilous path, with extreme and mounting wealth on one side, loss and deprivation on the other, and a credo of hard work will be rewarded somehow persisting despite it all. But this new American homelessness is a choice--one we have collectectively made as a society--and it comes at a cost: Grace consoling her baby brother as they pass the night in a Walmart parking lot; Kyrie and Desiree moving from one living room floor to another, never knowing where they'll be staying next; DJ and his siblings sleeping in a filthy, freezing storage room. Such suffering is so unnecessary, so utterly preventable. We have the solutions. We have the resources. What we need now is the will to act."
This eloquent, hard hitting book is a must read for people working in social work and related fields, policy makers, and people who give a damn about social justice.
On a purrrsonal note, trailer parks can be a lot like apartment complexes with the constant threat of huge rent increases and having the place sold off with very little time to find some
other park with room. When my husband and I had paid the mortgage on our trailer and were just paying lot rent we learned that our current landlord was looking to sell. Thank God for Coastal Enterprises! They're a Maine outfit that helps residents turn for profit trailer parks into resident owned cooperatives. In 2010 Greystone became a cooperative. My family had lived there for 20 years at that point. It was the first time I could live without the nagging fear of homelessness in the back of my mind. It felt amazing.
A great big shout out goes out to Coastal Enterprises and other organizations doing similar work.
Jules Hathaway
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