There Is No Place for Us by Brian Goldstone
Hope y'all who are caught up in this winter storm are managing to hunker down and stay safe.
My quest to read at least 10 nonfiction starts off with There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America by Brian Goldstone.
The book follows five families in Atlanta, Georgia, starting at various points before the 2020 COVID quarantines to the year or so shortly afterward. While some of them have circumstances exacerbated by alcoholism, all of them had it together prior to the point where they began to experience homelessness. Most of them were employed full time during the entirety of the book in a variety of jobs - sales, nursing, food services, social work, and more. All of them are real people as they are presented, warts and all; only the names have been changed to protect their privacy. We have a nuclear family, multi-generational homes, single parents, and more.
All of them, however, share the challenge that the expenses of housing, food, a vehicle, and utilities just aren't covered by jobs paying 11 to 13 dollars per an hour, which are the majority of jobs our protagonists are able to get due to stagnant wages. The book explores what led them to the point of experiencing homelessness, and how this population weathered the 2020 COVID restrictions and the protests following the murder of George Floyd.
Gentrification
One of the initial challenges that lead to our characters experiencing homelessness is gentrification. Atlanta has been experiencing an economic surge, with areas of decay being rebuilt and restored into beautiful spots, filled with art, events, and third places (places outside of home or work for gathering or recreation). The first Trump regime passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. This designated low cost land as 'opportunity zones', increasing the rate of gentrification.
Don't get me wrong - there are many spots of urban blight that need to be addressed in US Metros. However, the US policy of trying to solve economic problems by deregulating the private sector simply does not work. Capital investment firms came into these neighborhoods, and purchased large swaths of land and affordable housing for cheap, and non-renewed tenant leases. Then, they held onto the land for it to accrue value or sold it to other private investors to turn into luxury apartments.
Most of our families lost their homes not due to their own actions, but due to the disappearance of affordable housing. US deregulation around housing costs meant that these families, having lost their homes, found their neighborhoods were way more expensive than what they could afford when they first started renting. All of them were renters with poor credit due to being unable to keep up with soaring costs of living. All of them were forced to live in extended stay hotels, stay with families or friends, and often both.
Exploitative homelessness industry
Residents of these extend stays often end up paying more at these extended stays than they would in a standard apartment, but discriminatory housing practices prevent a more financially productive solution.
Ironically, under the restrictive definition of homelessness by HUD, people in these situations are not considered to be experiencing homelessness. Thus they cannot receive most housing aid. They are not counted among the number of people in the US experiencing homelessness as put out by the US Government. Changing the definitions of the numbers is a standard tactic of the government to obscure the gravity of a crisis.
An entire shadow industry has emerged to exploit those experiencing poverty and homelessness in the United States. Residents in these places have no tenants rights. There is a tense moment later in the book wherein one of the Extend Stay Motels does a mass lockout, forcing families onto the street at gun point for... missing a rent payment. What the fuck?
The author also makes it clear the racial divide at work here - all of the families are black, and there are clear parallels to redlining. While the racial discrimination angle is not overtly present now, many of the places our families stay are still within those original redlined or segregated neighborhoods, where poverty and homeless rates are disproportionately high.
Solutions
This book has so much information, and details the litany of challenges these families face. It is a constant dance of one step forward, two steps back as fewer places accept federal housing vouchers, and newly developed homes are being built to target primarily middle class or wealthy single families.
For most of our families, the book ends with them in precarious positions: a few of them have managed to make their way into a home, but these are still on shaky ground. The conditions that led to them experiencing homelessness are still present - and another Republican presidency means another wave of deregulation, further empowering moneyed class at the expense of those in poverty (not that establishment Democrats are virtually any better in pursuing real solutions).
The author ends the book with a few suggestions for how to address the affordable housing. Recognizing housing as a public good, such as national defense or public education, is a crucial step toward any of these. Rent controls to force affordable housing options, basic habitability standards, banning prohibitively expensive application fees, prohibiting poverty discrimination in housing, and requiring just cause evictions (rather than landlords having carte blanche to ruin tenant livelihood at their leisure) are a few of Goldstone's suggestions.
Final Thoughts
This book made me angry. It filled me with the kind of just anger I was looking for when I decided I would read more nonfiction this year. It is bleak, and heartbreakingly human. Worth a read, but just be aware that the picture it paints is dismal commentary on life in America.
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