One of the pervasive myths about people experiencing homelessness is that they refuse to work. This paints them as freeloaders deserving of stigma, a notion that rationalizes our nation’s failure to address root causes of poverty: minimum-wage pay, rising rents, scant tenant protections and the inclusion of credit scores on rental applications. The reality is that many people—over 12 million, in fact—work multiple jobs and still cannot afford safe, stable housing.
This complicated reality of homelessness is explored in There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America, a deep-dive work of reportage by Brian Goldstone. The Atlanta-based journalist followed five families for several years (including during the COVID-19 pandemic) as they struggled to keep a foothold. All of them lost stable housing because of lost jobs, car troubles, illness, rent hikes or landlords ending leases. They slept in their cars, crashed on friends’ and family members’ floors and paid hard-earned money for downright scuzzy rooms in the extended stay hotels that have become a de facto replacement for affordable housing in Atlanta.
The families’ narratives compose the majority of this 400-plus page tome. Keeping track of their many names and experiences can get unwieldy, but Goldstone’s extensive experience reporting from the trenches is evident. Readers truly get a full picture of how many of the working poor are essentially trapped in homelessness. His forays into subjects like the history of Atlanta housing projects and how the structure of credit scores impacts housing add meat to the narrative.
There Is No Place for Us belongs on the shelf next to Matthew Desmond’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. In illustrating how homelessness is skyrocketing in the richest country in the world, Goldstone has accomplished an incredible feat. His book is a must-read for anyone with interest in social sciences, equity and one of the defining American crises of our time.
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