Injustice

“There are lots of things we consider public goods and fund accordingly: K-12 education, Social Security, clean water, parks, libraries, roads and highways, and other infrastructure. How have we allowed something as fundamental as shelter to be excluded from this list?” (p. 434)

There is No Place for Us by Brian Goldstone takes very sad look at the life of a forgotten stratum of American life, that is people who are homeless but who have makeshift arrangements for living that result in their exclusion from the homeless statistics. He looks at several families, while providing more general insights about policies and misfortunes that determine their situations.

Here is the author’s description of a street in Atlanta typical of the environment where the muliple histories of homeless workers takes place — “block after block of dialysis clinics, liquor stores, pawnshops, payday lenders, hair-braiding salons, plasma donation centers, twenty-four-hour daycares, storefront churches, and ramshackle motels.” (p 64)

The book takes a close look at the lives of several families in Atlanta, Georgia, over a period of around a decade, and it’s full of really interesting (and very depressing) examples of how they cope with working, taking care of their children, trying to find various types of government or charitable assistance, and many other ways they manage their lives. The bigger picture:

“A more recent analysis by the Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that between thirty thousand and forty-seven thousand people are now living in metro Atlanta’s budget extended-stay hotels, charged rates that are often double what an apartment downthe street would cost. ‘It’s a reinforcing cycle,’ argues Michelle Dempsky, a Legal Aid attorney who litigates on behalf of extended-stay residents. ‘If you’re in emergency need, you’re paying a premium for necessity, which puts you in more financial distress, which makes you less able to secure housing, which means you’re stuck there.’” (p. 300)

 

The New York Times review described this book when it was published last spring:

“‘There Is No Place for Us’ is a moving book. It is also appropriately enraging. Incremental remedies, Goldstone argues, have only worsened a problem that stems from the assumption that housing is ultimately a commodity, ‘and that the few who own it will invariably profit at the expense of the many who need it.’”

In The Guardian This Week

A very closely related article about the practices at Dollar General and Family Dollar stores describes another way that similar families (with or without housing) are being taken advantage of. These supposedly lower-priced stores are often the only option for poor families very much llike those I’ve just been reading about. A quote that resonates with the sad histories of the people in the book:

Review © 2025 mae sander