Powerful ... Offers an immersive narrative of how five Atlanta families found themselves in the direst of straits yet statistically invisible ... An exceptional feat of reporting, full of an immediacy ... 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.
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 ... As Goldstone recounts each family’s trials, he seamlessly weaves in explanations of the systemic reasons behind them.
Devastating ... Seeks to redefine homelessness for our era of florid profiteering and a wilting welfare state as a condition more widespread than most Americans understand ... The vivid portraits Goldstone draws in There Is No Place for Us elicit compassion, empathy, outrage on behalf of the working homeless.
There Is No Place for Us gives us five thorough and devastating accounts of what the housing system does ... The stories in There Is No Place for Us are not just a litany of unconnected Bad Events, though the specific twists and turns are very bad. The book is a powerful narrative of exactly why it is so hard even for people working as hard as they can to get secure housing ... The deftness with which Goldstone weaves together these personal tragedies with the details of the systemic cruelties that explain them is remarkable ... How do you tell stories about the impact of purposefully byzantine policies and laws on people’s lives when the details are usually so complicated that most people would lose the thread? Goldstone has managed to do that here for one of the most complicated issues in the country, with wide-ranging causes and consequences that touch on many aspects of modern American life. It is an incredible feat ... In the end, the effect of There Is No Place for Us is stunning and bleak ... As readers conclude There Is No Place for Us, they will feel both the deeply personal impacts of the tragedies explored in the book...and the horrible breadth of it all ... A book like this ought to be a rallying cry, the 21st-century equivalent of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle ... Reading this book might not cause any policy to change. But it should change how Americans see each other and themselves, or at least our assumptions about what hard work gets you.
Stunning ... Building his book upon a sturdy web of narrative detail and propulsive storytelling, Goldstone, a journalist trained as an anthropologist, follows five Black families in Atlanta as their full-time jobs and dreams of upward mobility are interrupted by a crushing inability to keep themselves housed ... Despite how There Is No Place For Us reflects its magnificently stylistic impression of a gripping novel—punchy chapters that squeeze the spirit of its characters through the wringer of a punishing plot—readers will find no profound arc of change in protagonist or circumstance. Upon each final word on the page, the families arguably suffer just as badly (if not worse) than when we first meet them.
It’s a revelatory and gut-wrenching exploration of an often-ignored homeless population that is key to understanding poverty in America ... Its structure and pace keeps readers engaged as it underscores how many working families are teetering on the edge, and the obstacles that are thrown in their path in finding stable housing.
Through in-depth and often heart-rending accounts, Mr. Goldstone shows why they lack stable housing and face difficulties in acquiring it. But his ideas about how to help them turn out to be superficial and unpersuasive ... To help those left behind, he urges policymakers to take steps such as creating a legal right to affordable housing, controlling rents, building more 'social housing' ... At one time or another, all of these have been tried and often found wanting. Mr. Goldstone doesn’t seriously examine what happened in those failed attempts or suggest improvement ... 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.
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.
