What do you think?
Rate this book
When We Walk By: Forgotten Humanity, Broken Systems, and the Role We Can Each Play in Ending Homelessness in America
Think about the last time you saw or interacted with an unhoused person. What did you do? What did you say? Did you offer money or a smile, or did you avert your gaze?
When We Walk By takes an urgent look at homelessness in America, showing us what we lose—in ourselves and as a society—when we choose to walk past and ignore our neighbors in shelters and insecure housing or on the streets. And it brilliantly shows what we stand to gain when we embrace our humanity and move toward evidence-based, people-first, community-driven solutions.
When We Walk By takes an urgent look at homelessness in America, showing us what we lose—in ourselves and as a society—when we choose to walk past and ignore our neighbors in shelters and insecure housing or on the streets. And it brilliantly shows what we stand to gain when we embrace our humanity and move toward evidence-based, people-first, community-driven solutions.
328 pages, Paperback
First published November 20, 2023
190 people are currently reading
5828 people want to read
About the author
Kevin F. Adler
5 books34 followersKEVIN F. ADLER is an award-winning social entrepreneur, nonprofit leader, author, and speaker. Since 2014, he has served as the Founder and CEO of Miracle Messages, a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to helping people experiencing homelessness rebuild their social support systems and financial security, primarily through family reunification services, a phone buddy program and direct cash transfers, including one of the first basic income pilots for unhoused individuals in the United States.
Kevin’s pioneering work on homelessness and relational poverty has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, PBS NewsHour, in his TED Talk, on a billboard in Times Square, and in his forthcoming book, When We Walk By: Forgotten Humanity, Broken Systems, and the Role We Can Each Play in Ending Homelessness in America (November 2023). Kevin is also the author of Natural Disasters as a Catalyst for Social Capital, a book that explores how shared traumas can unite or divide communities. He has been honored as a Presidential Leadership Scholar, TED Resident, and Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar, for which he served one year in Oaxaca, Mexico. He received his MPhil in sociology from the University of Cambridge and his BA in politics from Occidental College, where President Obama's favorite professor said, "in 40 years of teaching, Kevin is the single best student I’ve ever had.”
Motivated by his late mother’s work teaching at underserved adult schools and nursing homes, and his late uncle’s 30 years living on and off the streets, Kevin believes in a future where everyone is recognized as invaluable and interconnected. Learn more at kevinfadler.com or follow him @kevinfadler.
Kevin’s pioneering work on homelessness and relational poverty has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, PBS NewsHour, in his TED Talk, on a billboard in Times Square, and in his forthcoming book, When We Walk By: Forgotten Humanity, Broken Systems, and the Role We Can Each Play in Ending Homelessness in America (November 2023). Kevin is also the author of Natural Disasters as a Catalyst for Social Capital, a book that explores how shared traumas can unite or divide communities. He has been honored as a Presidential Leadership Scholar, TED Resident, and Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar, for which he served one year in Oaxaca, Mexico. He received his MPhil in sociology from the University of Cambridge and his BA in politics from Occidental College, where President Obama's favorite professor said, "in 40 years of teaching, Kevin is the single best student I’ve ever had.”
Motivated by his late mother’s work teaching at underserved adult schools and nursing homes, and his late uncle’s 30 years living on and off the streets, Kevin believes in a future where everyone is recognized as invaluable and interconnected. Learn more at kevinfadler.com or follow him @kevinfadler.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 181 reviews
January 25, 2025
(2/5)
——
When I was in high school, we lived in a little * apartment in rural Illinois. It was across the street, a short walk from the factory where my mom (and several relatives) worked. We were on the South side of the tracks - a small open field separated us from them. Trains no longer run through this track and haven't for years, as far as I know. I used to walk over to the high school, only about a mile away, but rarely with sidewalks available.
My mom was a single parent after the separation. I remember her working various jobs—mostly waitressing and factory work, often two at a time. I remember walking home from school one day and seeing a pink paper on our front door. I don't know the specifics of that one, but I've seen enough in the years since to know it was a 5-day notice or some equivalent. This would have been 2010 or so. It might seem hard to believe that someone working two (sometimes three jobs, one under the table because of what this book calls the "cliff effect") couldn't afford the rent on an apartment. Yet, I'm here to tell you that was reality for my family then.
That's as close as I ever got to homelessness. What intervened in my life then wasn't an assistance program—it was one of my high school teachers who found out about this and paid three months of our rent anonymously. I thought about this a lot years later when I ran a rent assistance program, where people would sit across from a desk and tell me their story, and I would have to be the one to decide if we could pay 3 to 6 months of their rent, and sometimes advocate their case to my manager. That memory isn't what drew me to work with people experiencing homelessness and the policies that impact them, but it was on my mind a lot as I read Adler & Burnes's book.
I've been working in roles serving people experiencing homelessness since 2016, more or less, now working in a policy job rather than direct service. For this reason, I kept having to calibrate what I was looking for from this book. I didn't go in expecting something like "Homelessness is a Housing Problem" or "Poverty, by America" — I went in expecting a work exploring the deep moral injury(1) that occurs when we—the richest nation in the history of the world—walk by our fellows in calloused squalor, begging for subsistence. How do we function, the feelings of uncomfortability, the confusion, the knowledge that this should not be possible, with the evidence of it before our eyes and our frequent decision to do nothing but stare steely-eyed ahead?
That is not precisely what this book is. Adler and Burnes spend time discussing relational poverty—a kind of poverty in social networks and social capital—and how this weaves around the experience of being homeless and the systems that fail and struggle to serve those experiencing homelessness. Essentially, it is a primer on contemporary homelessness and graspable interventions to which the individual can contribute.
This works well as a relatively shallow introduction. It gives the lay of the land and enough information for informed conversations with their peers. That's a tremendous value.
It has a few problems. Some of these have to do with writing mechanics, and I'll save those (maybe snobbish) thoughts for last.
While reading the introduction, I started to feel a little uncomfortable. Without getting technical, I got the willies. Andrew Yang adorns the book’s cover with a blurb at the top. Yang's political candidacies have been a little odd, but his thoughts on UBI are at least (as far as I know) coherent. Yet, I tend to be suspicious of venture capitalists, especially when the very rich come into communities trying to serve the very poor. I dismissed this, and then, in the introduction, we began to hear a lot about Adler's work with Miracle Messages, and I got those willies again. Adler's intro seemed to suggest some kind of white savior complex to me, or maybe a variation of, "We're venture capitalists/start-up bros, and we're here to help." This did not ultimately seem to be accurate as I continued to read, but it made me defensive going in.
A contributor to this may be the concept of Miracle Messages, which seems to take more or less untrained volunteers and pair them with people experiencing homelessness in a buddy system for phone check-ins. I wonder about the support given to the volunteers, how these relationships form and sustain, and if they're healthy. Perhaps that is cynicism—volunteers encroaching on social work territory, and my reaction is some ingrained thing. It's a gut reaction, that's all. Perhaps it's a manifestation of my allergy to all things vaguely religious and the name "miracle." Loneliness is an epidemic, and Adler and Burnes's case for relational poverty is sound. I think the idea of a buddy phone program is interesting. Sometimes, it felt like a commercial for the program. Maybe that's not a bad thing?
Similarly, in the last chapter, a few paragraphs detail what readers can do to invest themselves in ending homelessness. The authors dedicate a whole page to listing start-up/non-profit-ish social entrepreneurship things, some of which crowdfund money for people experiencing homelessness. I find this dystopian. This shouldn't be necessary; this should be a tax-funded initiative, and we shouldn't have to rely on crowdfunding to satisfy the basic needs of the people in this country. Well, shoulda, woulda, coulda. Various levels of government presently fail to widely program basic income, direct cash assistance, affordable medical care, affordable tuition, affordable housing, etc. So, in the meantime, I guess social entrepreneurship is where it's at.
There is a recurring theme in the book on paternalism (a whole chapter and more). Yet, the book does not well address the realities of paternalism (progressive or punitive), with concepts like involuntary psychiatric holds. The book explores (BRIEFLY) the idea of forced hospitalization and does not dwell on how to square this with its previous writing on paternalism. The ethics of involuntary hospitalization of people experiencing homelessness is topical and rich for exploration. Yet, the book gives it only one paragraph (not even in the original chapter on paternalism or mental health). This is about as far as the book goes: "Furthermore, since involuntary treatment can easily be misused, it is critical that health care professionals determine that the individual is in desperate need of hospitalization before they are committed" (p. 197). I was disappointed that the book did not think more about this difficulty.
The authors routinely put "the homeless" in quotations and frequently discuss that they feel this moniker will be as gross (in time) as people referring to LGBTQ+ people as "the homosexuals." They make this point at least three times in the book, but only the last time did I understand what they were saying. In the first instance, "the homeless" is quickly grouped with "people experiencing homelessness" and "the unhoused" in the argument, and I thought to understand that they didn't like ANY grouping term (as they specifically note that people experiencing homelessness are frequently termed in homogenous ways). The book's final pages clarify that they are espousing support for Person-First Language (which is good!). The authors could have communicated their point more clearly. It is worth recognizing that when we talk about homogenous references vs. specific references to groups of people within a larger group, there is power in that larger grouping category. Adler and Burnes frequently bring up the LGBTQ+ community as a reference point for language (i.e., "the homosexuals" and the concept of being closeted). I hope people do not read this and seek to stop using terms like "people experiencing homelessness" in favor of something more discrete like "a person who couch surfs" or "someone who sleeps in their car." This distinction makes these groups appear smaller and easier to hide. Being able to have an umbrella term like "the gay community" (and eventually, "the LGBTQ+ community") helped take us from Stonewall to Obergefell in less than 50 years. We can understand, identify, and respect more specific groupings while holding onto the power that comes from big numbers.
Finally, I had some concerns about the writing. The authors have striven for so much organization that they have overorganized, and as a result, the book is repetitive. Some of the same stories and anecdotes appear several times, and this is not necessary in a book that's fewer than 250 pages. Each chapter ends with a "Key Takeaways" section, which repeats some elements of the previous 5 or 10 pages of the chapter. Then, the penultimate chapter ("Fixing Broken Systems") goes chapter-by-chapter with suggestions, restating the same statistics or stories. These notes, which were so powerful in their first use, are drained with every subsequent recurrence because they feel like disorganization rather than being the beat of a theme. In a second edition, I would suggest doing away with Chapter 12 and integrating solution sections in each topic chapter, allowing more efficient use of the reader's time and the book's page count.
Mechanically, the writing is passable but not great. Sometimes, this is just me being fussy about a terrible abundance of adverbs (the most criminal of these is on page 145: "One of the **most ubiquitous** developments" — ubiquitous means everywhere or totally! Skim away all of this unneeded text. Let's get on with it!). But sometimes, the phrasing is so poor as to appear careless and misleading to the reader. The most notable is on page 96: "And many local public housing authorities make it illegal to rent to someone with a felony conviction…" The problem is that a layperson may read this and somehow think that PHA's get to tell renters who they can and can't rent to — they can't. PHAs cannot determine what is and isn't illegal; they can only set policy within the guidelines set by Congress and, to a lesser extent, HUD. To say that PHAs can "make it illegal" is misleading. PHAs can and do set rules about approving people with felony convictions for vouchers- a bad practice that should be explained clearly in this text so that people can understand who sets that policy and to whom they should advocate in their community.
——
Overall, I would recommend this book to the layperson for a good primer on homelessness broadly and the ways many different systems intersect to make it difficult to escape it. The book could benefit by offering more information to the reader, such as who sets policies where and how to engage in advocacy around them. I am concerned that many of this book's solutions revolve around social entrepreneurs benefiting from unpaid volunteer work and, to a much lesser extent, local non-profits where direct service could help, but not at all around direct advocacy to local, State, and Federal policymakers.
(1) "Moral injury is the damage done to one's conscience or moral compass when that person perpetrates, witnesses, or fails to prevent acts that transgress one's own moral beliefs, values, or ethical codes of conduct." https://moralinjuryproject.syr.edu/ab...
(Edit July 2024: while talking with my mom recently, I found out that we weren’t in a section 8 apartment — we were in something that was low income, but they wouldn’t accept section 8. Those visits I remember to the housing authority were applying, but either not getting or getting but not finding somewhere to take it, apparently. I corrected the above paragraph.)
——
When I was in high school, we lived in a little * apartment in rural Illinois. It was across the street, a short walk from the factory where my mom (and several relatives) worked. We were on the South side of the tracks - a small open field separated us from them. Trains no longer run through this track and haven't for years, as far as I know. I used to walk over to the high school, only about a mile away, but rarely with sidewalks available.
My mom was a single parent after the separation. I remember her working various jobs—mostly waitressing and factory work, often two at a time. I remember walking home from school one day and seeing a pink paper on our front door. I don't know the specifics of that one, but I've seen enough in the years since to know it was a 5-day notice or some equivalent. This would have been 2010 or so. It might seem hard to believe that someone working two (sometimes three jobs, one under the table because of what this book calls the "cliff effect") couldn't afford the rent on an apartment. Yet, I'm here to tell you that was reality for my family then.
That's as close as I ever got to homelessness. What intervened in my life then wasn't an assistance program—it was one of my high school teachers who found out about this and paid three months of our rent anonymously. I thought about this a lot years later when I ran a rent assistance program, where people would sit across from a desk and tell me their story, and I would have to be the one to decide if we could pay 3 to 6 months of their rent, and sometimes advocate their case to my manager. That memory isn't what drew me to work with people experiencing homelessness and the policies that impact them, but it was on my mind a lot as I read Adler & Burnes's book.
I've been working in roles serving people experiencing homelessness since 2016, more or less, now working in a policy job rather than direct service. For this reason, I kept having to calibrate what I was looking for from this book. I didn't go in expecting something like "Homelessness is a Housing Problem" or "Poverty, by America" — I went in expecting a work exploring the deep moral injury(1) that occurs when we—the richest nation in the history of the world—walk by our fellows in calloused squalor, begging for subsistence. How do we function, the feelings of uncomfortability, the confusion, the knowledge that this should not be possible, with the evidence of it before our eyes and our frequent decision to do nothing but stare steely-eyed ahead?
That is not precisely what this book is. Adler and Burnes spend time discussing relational poverty—a kind of poverty in social networks and social capital—and how this weaves around the experience of being homeless and the systems that fail and struggle to serve those experiencing homelessness. Essentially, it is a primer on contemporary homelessness and graspable interventions to which the individual can contribute.
This works well as a relatively shallow introduction. It gives the lay of the land and enough information for informed conversations with their peers. That's a tremendous value.
It has a few problems. Some of these have to do with writing mechanics, and I'll save those (maybe snobbish) thoughts for last.
While reading the introduction, I started to feel a little uncomfortable. Without getting technical, I got the willies. Andrew Yang adorns the book’s cover with a blurb at the top. Yang's political candidacies have been a little odd, but his thoughts on UBI are at least (as far as I know) coherent. Yet, I tend to be suspicious of venture capitalists, especially when the very rich come into communities trying to serve the very poor. I dismissed this, and then, in the introduction, we began to hear a lot about Adler's work with Miracle Messages, and I got those willies again. Adler's intro seemed to suggest some kind of white savior complex to me, or maybe a variation of, "We're venture capitalists/start-up bros, and we're here to help." This did not ultimately seem to be accurate as I continued to read, but it made me defensive going in.
A contributor to this may be the concept of Miracle Messages, which seems to take more or less untrained volunteers and pair them with people experiencing homelessness in a buddy system for phone check-ins. I wonder about the support given to the volunteers, how these relationships form and sustain, and if they're healthy. Perhaps that is cynicism—volunteers encroaching on social work territory, and my reaction is some ingrained thing. It's a gut reaction, that's all. Perhaps it's a manifestation of my allergy to all things vaguely religious and the name "miracle." Loneliness is an epidemic, and Adler and Burnes's case for relational poverty is sound. I think the idea of a buddy phone program is interesting. Sometimes, it felt like a commercial for the program. Maybe that's not a bad thing?
Similarly, in the last chapter, a few paragraphs detail what readers can do to invest themselves in ending homelessness. The authors dedicate a whole page to listing start-up/non-profit-ish social entrepreneurship things, some of which crowdfund money for people experiencing homelessness. I find this dystopian. This shouldn't be necessary; this should be a tax-funded initiative, and we shouldn't have to rely on crowdfunding to satisfy the basic needs of the people in this country. Well, shoulda, woulda, coulda. Various levels of government presently fail to widely program basic income, direct cash assistance, affordable medical care, affordable tuition, affordable housing, etc. So, in the meantime, I guess social entrepreneurship is where it's at.
There is a recurring theme in the book on paternalism (a whole chapter and more). Yet, the book does not well address the realities of paternalism (progressive or punitive), with concepts like involuntary psychiatric holds. The book explores (BRIEFLY) the idea of forced hospitalization and does not dwell on how to square this with its previous writing on paternalism. The ethics of involuntary hospitalization of people experiencing homelessness is topical and rich for exploration. Yet, the book gives it only one paragraph (not even in the original chapter on paternalism or mental health). This is about as far as the book goes: "Furthermore, since involuntary treatment can easily be misused, it is critical that health care professionals determine that the individual is in desperate need of hospitalization before they are committed" (p. 197). I was disappointed that the book did not think more about this difficulty.
The authors routinely put "the homeless" in quotations and frequently discuss that they feel this moniker will be as gross (in time) as people referring to LGBTQ+ people as "the homosexuals." They make this point at least three times in the book, but only the last time did I understand what they were saying. In the first instance, "the homeless" is quickly grouped with "people experiencing homelessness" and "the unhoused" in the argument, and I thought to understand that they didn't like ANY grouping term (as they specifically note that people experiencing homelessness are frequently termed in homogenous ways). The book's final pages clarify that they are espousing support for Person-First Language (which is good!). The authors could have communicated their point more clearly. It is worth recognizing that when we talk about homogenous references vs. specific references to groups of people within a larger group, there is power in that larger grouping category. Adler and Burnes frequently bring up the LGBTQ+ community as a reference point for language (i.e., "the homosexuals" and the concept of being closeted). I hope people do not read this and seek to stop using terms like "people experiencing homelessness" in favor of something more discrete like "a person who couch surfs" or "someone who sleeps in their car." This distinction makes these groups appear smaller and easier to hide. Being able to have an umbrella term like "the gay community" (and eventually, "the LGBTQ+ community") helped take us from Stonewall to Obergefell in less than 50 years. We can understand, identify, and respect more specific groupings while holding onto the power that comes from big numbers.
Finally, I had some concerns about the writing. The authors have striven for so much organization that they have overorganized, and as a result, the book is repetitive. Some of the same stories and anecdotes appear several times, and this is not necessary in a book that's fewer than 250 pages. Each chapter ends with a "Key Takeaways" section, which repeats some elements of the previous 5 or 10 pages of the chapter. Then, the penultimate chapter ("Fixing Broken Systems") goes chapter-by-chapter with suggestions, restating the same statistics or stories. These notes, which were so powerful in their first use, are drained with every subsequent recurrence because they feel like disorganization rather than being the beat of a theme. In a second edition, I would suggest doing away with Chapter 12 and integrating solution sections in each topic chapter, allowing more efficient use of the reader's time and the book's page count.
Mechanically, the writing is passable but not great. Sometimes, this is just me being fussy about a terrible abundance of adverbs (the most criminal of these is on page 145: "One of the **most ubiquitous** developments" — ubiquitous means everywhere or totally! Skim away all of this unneeded text. Let's get on with it!). But sometimes, the phrasing is so poor as to appear careless and misleading to the reader. The most notable is on page 96: "And many local public housing authorities make it illegal to rent to someone with a felony conviction…" The problem is that a layperson may read this and somehow think that PHA's get to tell renters who they can and can't rent to — they can't. PHAs cannot determine what is and isn't illegal; they can only set policy within the guidelines set by Congress and, to a lesser extent, HUD. To say that PHAs can "make it illegal" is misleading. PHAs can and do set rules about approving people with felony convictions for vouchers- a bad practice that should be explained clearly in this text so that people can understand who sets that policy and to whom they should advocate in their community.
——
Overall, I would recommend this book to the layperson for a good primer on homelessness broadly and the ways many different systems intersect to make it difficult to escape it. The book could benefit by offering more information to the reader, such as who sets policies where and how to engage in advocacy around them. I am concerned that many of this book's solutions revolve around social entrepreneurs benefiting from unpaid volunteer work and, to a much lesser extent, local non-profits where direct service could help, but not at all around direct advocacy to local, State, and Federal policymakers.
(1) "Moral injury is the damage done to one's conscience or moral compass when that person perpetrates, witnesses, or fails to prevent acts that transgress one's own moral beliefs, values, or ethical codes of conduct." https://moralinjuryproject.syr.edu/ab...
(Edit July 2024: while talking with my mom recently, I found out that we weren’t in a section 8 apartment — we were in something that was low income, but they wouldn’t accept section 8. Those visits I remember to the housing authority were applying, but either not getting or getting but not finding somewhere to take it, apparently. I corrected the above paragraph.)
September 29, 2023
Five stars from me is a rarity so it tells you something!
The most comprehensive book on the topic I ever read! Well researched! Well written! It´s almost perfect because nothing is perfect :)
This book should be given to every policy maker, politician, NGOs, and library everywhere, not only in US! Should be discussed in schools and universities!
I wanted to throw in here some quotes and data, but then I realized that if I start I will keep typing for the next hour at least, so let me just say, that the data that we have here is beyond shocking.
MANDATORY!!!!
The most comprehensive book on the topic I ever read! Well researched! Well written! It´s almost perfect because nothing is perfect :)
This book should be given to every policy maker, politician, NGOs, and library everywhere, not only in US! Should be discussed in schools and universities!
I wanted to throw in here some quotes and data, but then I realized that if I start I will keep typing for the next hour at least, so let me just say, that the data that we have here is beyond shocking.
MANDATORY!!!!
July 31, 2024
Offers great perspective on a difficult issue. He gives it the issue a much more personal approach that makes it more relatable and emotional, rather than just shouting facts at you. I did feel a pretty sad thinking about how terribly people can treat other people and even thoughts I have had while passing someone experiencing homelessness on the street. I especially liked the story he brought up about how quickly we were able to solve homelessness in San Francisco after the earthquake in 1906. We are resourceful only when we want to be and when we think people deserve it. No one deserves to be homeless. It is a basic human right and it’s time we start treating it that way. There are so many easy laws and practices that would significantly decrease the number of people experiencing homelessness. One of the easiest is more affordable and tiny home style housing units. Wealthy people in nice areas need to be less resistant to these developments. Small changes will go a long way. Think twice about whining about your property values when someone cannot even afford food or shelter.
February 25, 2024
I received this book from a giveaway. Thank you North Atlantic Books.
As a society we can help the un-housed find homes. This book is a start for that journey.
As a society we can help the un-housed find homes. This book is a start for that journey.
April 29, 2025
When We Walk By is easily one of my favorite nonfiction reads this year. Homelessness is a topic I’m deeply passionate about, and this book does a phenomenal job building a bridge of connection by sharing the real-life stories of people experiencing homelessness. It’s not just about storytelling, though—the authors take it a step further, debunking common misconceptions and challenging the way we approach conversations about homelessness and the individuals impacted by it.
I’ve always felt strongly about this issue, partly because I’ve seen how easily someone’s life can take a turn. I’ve had friends who’ve faced homelessness, and while I’ve been fortunate to have a support system, I know how thin that line can be for so many. This book captures that fragile reality beautifully. It reinforces the idea that homelessness isn’t a moral failing or a reflection of someone’s worth. It’s often a result of circumstances—an accident, an illness, a lost job—that could happen to anyone.
The authors delve into the narratives and policies that shape our understanding of homelessness, including how certain measures criminalize those who are simply trying to survive. They also explore programs designed to reconnect unhoused individuals with family members they’ve lost touch with. These moments of reconnection were some of the most powerful parts of the book for me, highlighting the importance of human connection and the dignity of being seen and heard.
Admittedly, there were times when the reflections and quotes felt repetitive, but I didn’t mind—it only emphasized the central message: these are people, not problems to be solved or ignored. The reflections at the end of each chapter were especially impactful, encouraging readers to think critically about what they’ve read and to consider actionable steps to address homelessness in their own communities.
In a world where material success and homeownership are often equated with value, this book is a sobering reminder of what truly matters: humanity, compassion, and the morality we seem to be losing. With so many people living paycheck to paycheck, When We Walk By is a crucial read and a call to action to care about something beyond ourselves. It’s books like this that remind me why I’m so passionate about this issue and why it’s worth fighting for a better future.
I’ve always felt strongly about this issue, partly because I’ve seen how easily someone’s life can take a turn. I’ve had friends who’ve faced homelessness, and while I’ve been fortunate to have a support system, I know how thin that line can be for so many. This book captures that fragile reality beautifully. It reinforces the idea that homelessness isn’t a moral failing or a reflection of someone’s worth. It’s often a result of circumstances—an accident, an illness, a lost job—that could happen to anyone.
The authors delve into the narratives and policies that shape our understanding of homelessness, including how certain measures criminalize those who are simply trying to survive. They also explore programs designed to reconnect unhoused individuals with family members they’ve lost touch with. These moments of reconnection were some of the most powerful parts of the book for me, highlighting the importance of human connection and the dignity of being seen and heard.
Admittedly, there were times when the reflections and quotes felt repetitive, but I didn’t mind—it only emphasized the central message: these are people, not problems to be solved or ignored. The reflections at the end of each chapter were especially impactful, encouraging readers to think critically about what they’ve read and to consider actionable steps to address homelessness in their own communities.
In a world where material success and homeownership are often equated with value, this book is a sobering reminder of what truly matters: humanity, compassion, and the morality we seem to be losing. With so many people living paycheck to paycheck, When We Walk By is a crucial read and a call to action to care about something beyond ourselves. It’s books like this that remind me why I’m so passionate about this issue and why it’s worth fighting for a better future.
January 30, 2025
Phenomenal. This book is unlike any I’ve read dealing with social injustice because it offers really wonderful, tangible, and doable solutions for individuals. I could not recommend it more. The last chapter is a retelling of the gospel.
April 23, 2023
'Everyone is someone's somebody.'
This book made me teary, angry, frustrated and hopeful. The authors gave me small ideas that I as an individual can do to try make our world just a little more just and kind. The authors do a good job of reinforcing that those who are unhoused are humans like you and me, deserving of respect and dignity, our neighbours, people to be loved and not problems to be solved.
If you are like me you feel for those you see unhoused - but walk by not knowing what to do.
'We have to shut down a piece of our own humanity to be able to walk past another human being that is in such a difficult situation.'
The book is organized into three sections looking at: Humanity, Systems, and Solutions. The authors take personal stories and a great deal of data and research to outline how dire the situation is and how the status-quo is not working. This book challenges us to work towards solutions knowing that those who are unhoused are what we can see yet there are so many more in danger of becoming unhoused. The authors outline the differences between compassion and punitive paternalism. They highlight how there is nowhere within the US that a person making minimum wage can afford a one bedroom apartment, and how the cost of providing supportive housing vs. dealing with an unhoused individual is 3x cheaper! How society in general seems homelessness and poverty as a character flaw rather than a set of circumstances outside the control of those affected. The book showcases several programs around the US that are having a great deal of success.
'While suffering in sight, and making many housed people feel uncomfortable, the vast majority of homeless people, including people with mental illness, aren't hurting anyone.'
'....anti homelessness laws criminalize individuals experiencing homelessness for trying to fulfil their basic needs for living: sleeping, eating, urinating, defecating, sitting and more. People who are forced to live on the streets violate laws simply trying to stay alive. '
We say that we care, but our actions and systems say otherwise.'
Ending homelessness can feel impossible but cannot be solved from a distance.' 'These are our neighbors.' 'Keep in mind: "They - are us.'
This book should be read by all politicians, all civic leaders, all those people who are afraid and all those who want to help.
Thank you to North Atlantic Books and NetGalley for an early copy in exchange for an honest review.
This book made me teary, angry, frustrated and hopeful. The authors gave me small ideas that I as an individual can do to try make our world just a little more just and kind. The authors do a good job of reinforcing that those who are unhoused are humans like you and me, deserving of respect and dignity, our neighbours, people to be loved and not problems to be solved.
If you are like me you feel for those you see unhoused - but walk by not knowing what to do.
'We have to shut down a piece of our own humanity to be able to walk past another human being that is in such a difficult situation.'
The book is organized into three sections looking at: Humanity, Systems, and Solutions. The authors take personal stories and a great deal of data and research to outline how dire the situation is and how the status-quo is not working. This book challenges us to work towards solutions knowing that those who are unhoused are what we can see yet there are so many more in danger of becoming unhoused. The authors outline the differences between compassion and punitive paternalism. They highlight how there is nowhere within the US that a person making minimum wage can afford a one bedroom apartment, and how the cost of providing supportive housing vs. dealing with an unhoused individual is 3x cheaper! How society in general seems homelessness and poverty as a character flaw rather than a set of circumstances outside the control of those affected. The book showcases several programs around the US that are having a great deal of success.
'While suffering in sight, and making many housed people feel uncomfortable, the vast majority of homeless people, including people with mental illness, aren't hurting anyone.'
'....anti homelessness laws criminalize individuals experiencing homelessness for trying to fulfil their basic needs for living: sleeping, eating, urinating, defecating, sitting and more. People who are forced to live on the streets violate laws simply trying to stay alive. '
We say that we care, but our actions and systems say otherwise.'
Ending homelessness can feel impossible but cannot be solved from a distance.' 'These are our neighbors.' 'Keep in mind: "They - are us.'
This book should be read by all politicians, all civic leaders, all those people who are afraid and all those who want to help.
Thank you to North Atlantic Books and NetGalley for an early copy in exchange for an honest review.
Read
November 23, 20244.5/5 ⭐️! For me, this was the perfect ratio of description for systematic issues, large-scale solutions, and individual solutions. I really enjoyed this
January 24, 2025
Provides a full scope reality into those who are unhoused. The idea of relational poverty was new and stuck out to me. A necessary read for all!
April 19, 2023
Summary:
When We Walk By takes an urgent look at homelessness in America, showing us what we lose—in ourselves and as a society—when we choose to walk past and ignore our neighbors in shelters, insecure housing, or on the streets. And it brilliantly shows what we stand to gain when we embrace our humanity and move toward evidence-based people-first, community-driven solutions, offering social analysis, economic and political histories, and the real stories of unhoused people.
Review:
4⭐️
This book was brilliant. It really brought to life the people and individuals behind the statistics and stereotypes.
It challenges the perception society has and made me think about my own biases towards people experiencing homelessness.
The authors unflinchingly highlight how the narrative of homelessness being an individual issue is both fundamentally wrong but also serves to prevent us holding those systems responsible to account.
A spotlight is shone on the true impact of homelessness - how multifaceted it can be: affecting mental and physical health, family relationships, the criminal justice system and discrimination.
Highlights issue of racism and discrimination and just how endemic it is in modern society.
Brings into the light the significant problem of youth homelessness that most of us are blind to. Showcases the particular struggles of children who grow up in care and the need for longer term support post 18.
Although based in the US so much of this book is relevant to the UK too.
A really powerful and thought provoking book.
When We Walk By takes an urgent look at homelessness in America, showing us what we lose—in ourselves and as a society—when we choose to walk past and ignore our neighbors in shelters, insecure housing, or on the streets. And it brilliantly shows what we stand to gain when we embrace our humanity and move toward evidence-based people-first, community-driven solutions, offering social analysis, economic and political histories, and the real stories of unhoused people.
Review:
4⭐️
This book was brilliant. It really brought to life the people and individuals behind the statistics and stereotypes.
It challenges the perception society has and made me think about my own biases towards people experiencing homelessness.
The authors unflinchingly highlight how the narrative of homelessness being an individual issue is both fundamentally wrong but also serves to prevent us holding those systems responsible to account.
A spotlight is shone on the true impact of homelessness - how multifaceted it can be: affecting mental and physical health, family relationships, the criminal justice system and discrimination.
Highlights issue of racism and discrimination and just how endemic it is in modern society.
Brings into the light the significant problem of youth homelessness that most of us are blind to. Showcases the particular struggles of children who grow up in care and the need for longer term support post 18.
Although based in the US so much of this book is relevant to the UK too.
A really powerful and thought provoking book.
June 24, 2024
Everyone needs to read this book. The hard hitting truths, statistics, and personal accounts will change how you view homelessness and how these people are not a problem to be solved, but people to be loved. This book shows how homelessness is a systemic issue and takes the blame off of those experiencing homelessness and puts it on our flawed social and economic systems. I will never view homelessness the same and I am better for it. Now knowing what I know from this text and humbling myself by admitting my preconceived notions and stereotypes, I am ready to love on my neighbors experiencing homelessness and give them the respect, attention, and love they deserve and desperately need.
November 22, 2023
I recently had an experience where I walked by, and it had been haunting me. I saw this book and had to read it. I learned so much about an unbelievably complicated issue, and it moved me to take action. I immediately recommended it to all my friends, and hope they will all read it too. An important book for our time.
2023
June 4, 2024📱 Thank you to NetGalley and North Atlantic Books
June 13, 2024
A must read for anyone who has encountered a person experiencing homelessness.
October 3, 2024
A must read.
July 24, 2024
Super informative book on a huge problem we have in the US. Loved that the author provided personalized stories and actionable ways anyone can help.
March 4, 2024
Book #15 of 2024. "When We Walk By" by Kevin F. Adler and Donald W. Burnes. 5/5 rating. 235 p.
This book is all about homelessness: its causes and how we can help stop it. It is simply one of the most impactful books I have ever read. This is an absolute must-read!!
"[W]e regard our unhoused neighbors as problems to be solved, rather than as people to be loved."
I honestly don't have the space to write about the amazing book this is. It covers the myriad of problems faced by those experiencing homelessness: the 1.8% of all Americans who fall into it at some point each year.
While it is very easy to place the blame at these people's feet, it is nowhere near that simple. Homelessness is truly intersectional: it is caused by a lack of housing, poverty, and relationships, it is exacerbated by the criminal justice system, low wages, the cost of health care, and a feeding from incarceration into homelessness. And quite possibly, most sadly, it is felt by over a fifth of those who age out of foster care.
This review certainly can't be long enough to change people's minds who think that "they" are different than "us", but so many Americans are on the precipice of falling in: one missed paycheck from not affording rent. Without relationships, what stops them from becoming homeless? The simple answer, is not much.
This book preaches that fixing these problems are as much about changing minds as law. What could we create if we looked at those experiencing homelessness with compassion and love instead of disgust and loathing?
Looking to help?
- Start a conversation with someone
- Offer socks
- Check out miraclemessages.org (or call 1-800-MISS-YOU)
- "As Aboriginal activists said in the 1970s, 'If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.'"
#whenwewalkby
Quotes:
"Everyone is someone's somebody."
"[T]he actual number of people who experience homelessness at some point over the course of the year is likely closer to 6 million people, or roughly 1.8% of the total population in the United States."
"For example, despite constituting approximately 12% of the general population in the United States, African Americans make up 37% of all people experiencing homelessness, and 50% of people experiencing homelessness as members of families with children."
"Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or questioning (LGBTQ+) youth make up an estimated 9% of the youth across the country but a whopping 40% of all of the unattached, unhoused youth nationwide."
"In other words, the vast majority pf individuals experiencing homelessness are unrecognizable from the average securely housed person in the United States, who is living paycheck to paycheck, is unable to save much money, probably works hard but is not perfect, and is only one emergency away from potentially not being able to pay the rent. 'They' are us."
"We have a nationwide deficit of seven million affordable housing units and overwhelmingly agree that more should be done to help, yet we protest new affordable housing projects in our own neighborhoods. This disconnect illustrated one of the central arguments we will be making in this book: we say that we care, but our actions and systems say otherwise."
"[W]e regard our unhoused neighbors as problems to be solved, rather than as people to be loved."
"Hearts and minds are as important to change as service systems and local ordinances; indeed, changes to one are not possible or sustainable without changes to the other."
"Although the external indicator of homelessness is a lack of stable housing, the lived experience is often one of extreme isolation, disconnection, broken or nonexistent social support, stigmatization, and shame."
"Millions of housed individuals and families are right now living on the brink of financial disaster, and we as coauthors believe that the only thing keeping them from homelessness is the support of their networks. One out of every two Americans is a paycheck away from not being able to pay rent - given this harrowing statistic, it is rather astonishing that 'only' 6 million Americans experience homelessness each year."
"Another sociologist, Arlie Russell Hochschild, more recently described stigma as an 'empathy wall' that presents 'an obstacle to deep understanding of another person, one that can make us feel indifferent or even hostile to those [...] in different circumstances.'"
"Yet less than 40% of all people experiencing homelessness, using the narrow HUD definition, are unsheltered living on the streets."
"When we listen to Ray's story, it is clear that there was nothing Ray personally did to deserve homelessness. He became homeless due to very unfortunate circumstances involving a health crisis, job loss, self-imposed social isolation, and refusing to ask for help. However, public perceptions of the causes of homelessness tend to center around perceived character flaws rather than circumstances."
"In other words, our brains perceive extreme outgroups - including people experiencing homelessness - as nonhuman."
"To summarize these findings: upon viewing images of extreme outgroups, the region of our brain that normally activates when we see a fellow human being is not activated, but the region of our brain that activates when we feel disgusted by the sight of a gross inanimate object is activated. This forms the neurological basis of dehumanization: individuals experiencing homelessness are perceived as less than human, even at the neural level."
"Indeed, a prerequisite of paternalism is our assumption that 'the homeless' cannot be trusted, built on the premise that 'they' are mostly dangerous and unpredictable. Yet data suggest that in most crimes involving a person experiencing homelessness, it is the person experiencing homelessness who is the victim, usually at the hands of a housed assailant."
"Programs like Miracle Money and the New Leaf Project challenge the stereotype that giving money to people experiencing homelessness will lead to waste or mismanagement. In the New Leag Project, those who received the lump sum spent fewer nights in shelters, and consequently saved the shelter system about $405,000 over the year, or approximately $8,100 per person - a net savings of $600 compared to the $7,500 per person that was distributed as a lump sum. 'The most efficient way to spend money on the homeless might be to give it to them,' as stated in a prescient 2004 article in the +Economist+."
"As such, one of the primary cultural narratives in the United States is an individual responsibility. Under this narrative, homelessness is an abject individual failure; there is little regard for how a person experiencing homelessness got to the situation they are in, much less how so many of the rest of us 'housed people' rely on our social support systems to get by."
"I always tell people that you can call me anything that you want. You can call me Arnold. You can call me Schwarzenegger. You can call me the Austrian oak. You can call me Schwarzy. You can call me Arnie. But don't ever, ever call me a self-made man.
But this is so important for you to understand. I didn't make it that far on my own. I mean, to accept that credit or that medal, would discount every single person that has helped me get here today, that gave me advice, that made an effort, that lifted me up when I fell. And it gives the wrong impression that we can do it all alone. None of us can. The whole concept of the self-made man or woman is a myth.[...]
Like everyone, to get to where I am, I stood on the shoulders of giants. My life was built on a foundation of parents, coaches, and teachers; of kind souls who lent couches or gym back rooms where I could sleep; of mentors who shared wisdom and advice; of idols who motivated me from the pages of magazines (and, as my life grew, from personal interaction)."
"+There but for the grace of God go I.+"
"While there are many factors that contribute to America's homelessness crisis, the availability and affordability of housing are the most significant;"
"A 2012 study by the +Washington Post+ found that when looking at total tax expenditures by the government rather than narrowly defined 'government benefits,' 24% of expenditures went to the top 1% of earners. Only 3% of tax expenditures went to the bottom 20%."
"In groundbreaking research, Dennis Culhane, one of the nation's leading researchers on homelessness, found that the cost of providing housing and services to people experiencing homelessness is estimated to be almost 50% lower than the cost associated with health care and incarceration alone if nothing is done. A 2020 study in Canada indicates that 'on average, it costs $87,000 per year to support a person using hospitals, jails, courts, and emergency services, because they don't have a home. But once that person has a home, the cost of their housing and [support services] decrease to approximately $30,500 per year, representing a 65% reduction.'"
"In fact, most studies put the life expectancy of people experiencing homelessness as 20 to 30 years shorter than their stably housed counterparts, a jaw-dropping difference."
"Based on their review of a large number of studies, Tobin and Murphy suggest that around 45% of individuals experiencing homelessness receive income from having at least one job, and many of the rest, about 40% cannot work as a result of disability."
"[T]he total subsidy for the mortgage interest deduction exceeded 'the entire budgets for the Departments of Education, Justice, and Energy combined' in 2015, and...the homeowner's net worth was 36 times greater than the average renter's that year."
"The federal public benefit system, intended to help those in poverty, is significantly underfunded and shamefully inaccessible to people experiencing homelessness due to bureaucratic barriers such as lack of a permanent mailing address, reliable transportation, and documentation, along with difficulty determining eligibility, completing complex application processes, and the ease in which life-saving benefits can be lost."
"Housing status is considered by medical practitioners to be a more accurate metric for establishing disease risk than diet, exercise, medical history, or even biological age. Housing is health care, and its absence is a death sentence."
"As one example, starting in 2012 Los Angeles County began identifying frequent utilizers of the ED, moving them into supportive housing and providing additional physical and mental health services there. Among the 3,500 individuals experiencing homelessness who were moved off the streets into housing, ED visits declined by a whopping 70%, saving the county $6.5 million, or $1.20 for every dollar spent on the program. Once placed into supportive housing, these formerly unhoused individuals experienced gret health improvements: they reported fewer hospitalizations, fewer unmet physical and mental health needs, and being significantly happier."
"Though many deinstitutionalized patients became homeless, many more ended up in jails and prisons. In the 1970s, the number of incarcerated individuals with severe mental illness was around 5%. In the 1980s, this figure rose to 10%, and in the 1990s, to 15%. Between 2007 and 2012, the estimate rose to 20%-40%."
"The numbers are harrowing: between 15% and 20% of state and federal prisoners experienced homelessness immediately prior to their incarceration. Forty percent said they had been homeless at some point during the past several years. This represents an overrepresentation of people experiencing homelessness moving into incarceration of at least 10 times the standardized estimate for the general US adult population."
"In the United States, having a criminal record casts a very wide, lingering shadow. A criminal record can make it impossible to secure housing, access life-saving benefits, gain stable employment, and more. As one indication of how destabilizing incarceration is, individuals who have been incarcerated once are 7 times more likely to experience homelessness, while those incarcerated more than once are 13 times more likely."
"As Michelle Alexander points out in her landmark book +The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness+, 'Most people branded felons, in fact, are not sentenced to prison [...] [they are] barred from public housing by law, discriminated against by private landlords, ineligible for food stamps, forced to 'check the box' indicating a felony conviction on employment applications for nearly every job, and denied licenses for a wide range of professions.' These barriers, specific to incarceration, are compounded by the many barriers to housing and employment poor people face in this country in general: credit checks, income requirements, high security deposits, and the like."
"For the 2020-2021 school year, the National Center on Homeless Education found that 1,096,669 public school children experienced homelessness, and another 1 million children under the age of six years old experienced homelessness, out of the approximately 6 million people who experience homelessness each year in the United States. This is 34.9% of the total population, or more than one in every three people experiencing homelessness under the Department of Education's definition and our estimates."
"A staggering 36% of young adults who age out of the foster care system report experiencing homelessness by the time they are 26 years old. For Black youth in foster care, this risk of homelessness is even higher, about 60%."
"But the next time you hear someone talk about homelessness as 'a choice' or in even more derogatory terms, consider asking them if they believe that the more than one in three young people who age out of foster care into homelessness are somehow making a choice or are otherwise 'failed' individuals."
"While reasons for each move vary, 'more than a third of foster children and youth experience more than two placements each year, meaning their living arrangements change at least twice a year,' while an average foster youth moves 6.5 times while in care. Each school move results in a four- to six-month loss of academic achievement for foster care youth."
"[M]ost formerly unhoused tenants appear in eviction proceedings without legal representation, and consequently lose over 90% of the time. However, if the tenant is able to secure adequate legal representation, they successfully defeat the eviction almost 90% of the time."
"For individuals experiencing homelessness with substance use disorders, treatment programs have proven to be effective by emphasizing the importance of concurrently meeting various needs like 'assistance with accessing food, clothing, shelter/housing, identification papers, financial assistance and entitlements, legal aid, medical and dental care, psychiatric care, counseling, job training, and employment services.'"
"It is simply unconscionable that 65% of the prison population has an active substance use disorder."
"Like them, he sat on the other end of the bench eating his sandwich. He never once looked up at them, not even a glance in their direction, keeping his head low under the shade of his cap. Passersby smiled warmly at Amanda and her mom, but not at the man on the other end of the bench. They were three people eating waffle fries on a Saturday afternoon on a bench, yet the world only saw two of them: a kindergartener and her mom. For the man, the mellowness of Southern hospitality wasn't offered. He received no soft grins, no waves, no 'how y'all doing todays.' There was neither kindness nor acknowledgement of his presence."
"We believe the risk is not in sometimes being wrong on an incredibly multifaceted, intersectional issue like homelessness, but in not having the courage to be wrong, by not asking the hard questions of ourselves and each other, and listening to what we may hear. Questions like, What might it look like to respond to the homelessness crisis of today with humanity at the forefront?"
"In the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake and fire, some 250,000 residents of San Francisco were displaced, establishing makeshift camps in park areas and in burnt-out ruins of buildings. For a short period of time, more than half of the city's 400,000 residents homelessness.
In response, the city did not pass anti-camping ordinances. Law enforcement was not mobilized to raze tents and confiscate belongings. Local residents whose homes withstood the brunt of the disaster did not join together to form anti-survivor, not-in-my-backyard protests.
Instead, city officials and local residents rallied together to help. 'As winter approached, the city built 5,300 small wooden cottages for those in need of housing' while 'the army housed 20,000 refugees in military-style tent camps.' Camps formed playgroups for kids and dining halls for individuals and families, which became the centers for social life. Tenants paid $2 a month toward the $50 price of their earthquake cottage, many assembled in Golden Gate Park. After paying off their new home, the owners were required to move their cottages out of the camp, leaving earthquake cottages scattered throughout San Francisco, in an early example of scattered site housing. In June 1908, just two years after one of the most devastating disasters in American history, the last camp closed; 250,000 unhoused survivors had been housed."
"So now that you have spent many hours with us through these pages (thank you!), we invite you to commit an additional hour or two within the next 30 days to get to know one of your neighbors experiencing homelessness, and thus take an initial step toward helping to end relational poverty on the streets."
"As Aboriginal activists said in the 1970s, 'If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.'"
"As the Talmud wisely reminds us, 'Whoever saves a single life [...] saved the whole world,' including our own."
"For despite the cliché, not every challenge can or should be neatly wrapped up in a bow of 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.' Traumas ae not just obstacles to overcome and later highlight as part of your sterling biography: they are traumas. Share yours, not as a medal on your jacket or as part of a dispiriting game of comparison but as a wound from a familiar war, one that your neughbors experiencing homelessness are almost certainly still facing: a grim health prognosis, emergency surgery, job loss and prolonged period of unemployment, eviction, wildfire that took nearly everything, domestic violence, addiction, poverty, childhood trauma, unfathomable death of a family member, debilitating injury, incarceration, falling out with a loved one, untreated clinical depression, isolation and loneliness, shame and self-loathing, and other hard human experiences."
"In a sense, we each need to find our own Uncle Mark: someone we love, whom we could never imagine walking by."
This book is all about homelessness: its causes and how we can help stop it. It is simply one of the most impactful books I have ever read. This is an absolute must-read!!
"[W]e regard our unhoused neighbors as problems to be solved, rather than as people to be loved."
I honestly don't have the space to write about the amazing book this is. It covers the myriad of problems faced by those experiencing homelessness: the 1.8% of all Americans who fall into it at some point each year.
While it is very easy to place the blame at these people's feet, it is nowhere near that simple. Homelessness is truly intersectional: it is caused by a lack of housing, poverty, and relationships, it is exacerbated by the criminal justice system, low wages, the cost of health care, and a feeding from incarceration into homelessness. And quite possibly, most sadly, it is felt by over a fifth of those who age out of foster care.
This review certainly can't be long enough to change people's minds who think that "they" are different than "us", but so many Americans are on the precipice of falling in: one missed paycheck from not affording rent. Without relationships, what stops them from becoming homeless? The simple answer, is not much.
This book preaches that fixing these problems are as much about changing minds as law. What could we create if we looked at those experiencing homelessness with compassion and love instead of disgust and loathing?
Looking to help?
- Start a conversation with someone
- Offer socks
- Check out miraclemessages.org (or call 1-800-MISS-YOU)
- "As Aboriginal activists said in the 1970s, 'If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.'"
#whenwewalkby
Quotes:
"Everyone is someone's somebody."
"[T]he actual number of people who experience homelessness at some point over the course of the year is likely closer to 6 million people, or roughly 1.8% of the total population in the United States."
"For example, despite constituting approximately 12% of the general population in the United States, African Americans make up 37% of all people experiencing homelessness, and 50% of people experiencing homelessness as members of families with children."
"Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or questioning (LGBTQ+) youth make up an estimated 9% of the youth across the country but a whopping 40% of all of the unattached, unhoused youth nationwide."
"In other words, the vast majority pf individuals experiencing homelessness are unrecognizable from the average securely housed person in the United States, who is living paycheck to paycheck, is unable to save much money, probably works hard but is not perfect, and is only one emergency away from potentially not being able to pay the rent. 'They' are us."
"We have a nationwide deficit of seven million affordable housing units and overwhelmingly agree that more should be done to help, yet we protest new affordable housing projects in our own neighborhoods. This disconnect illustrated one of the central arguments we will be making in this book: we say that we care, but our actions and systems say otherwise."
"[W]e regard our unhoused neighbors as problems to be solved, rather than as people to be loved."
"Hearts and minds are as important to change as service systems and local ordinances; indeed, changes to one are not possible or sustainable without changes to the other."
"Although the external indicator of homelessness is a lack of stable housing, the lived experience is often one of extreme isolation, disconnection, broken or nonexistent social support, stigmatization, and shame."
"Millions of housed individuals and families are right now living on the brink of financial disaster, and we as coauthors believe that the only thing keeping them from homelessness is the support of their networks. One out of every two Americans is a paycheck away from not being able to pay rent - given this harrowing statistic, it is rather astonishing that 'only' 6 million Americans experience homelessness each year."
"Another sociologist, Arlie Russell Hochschild, more recently described stigma as an 'empathy wall' that presents 'an obstacle to deep understanding of another person, one that can make us feel indifferent or even hostile to those [...] in different circumstances.'"
"Yet less than 40% of all people experiencing homelessness, using the narrow HUD definition, are unsheltered living on the streets."
"When we listen to Ray's story, it is clear that there was nothing Ray personally did to deserve homelessness. He became homeless due to very unfortunate circumstances involving a health crisis, job loss, self-imposed social isolation, and refusing to ask for help. However, public perceptions of the causes of homelessness tend to center around perceived character flaws rather than circumstances."
"In other words, our brains perceive extreme outgroups - including people experiencing homelessness - as nonhuman."
"To summarize these findings: upon viewing images of extreme outgroups, the region of our brain that normally activates when we see a fellow human being is not activated, but the region of our brain that activates when we feel disgusted by the sight of a gross inanimate object is activated. This forms the neurological basis of dehumanization: individuals experiencing homelessness are perceived as less than human, even at the neural level."
"Indeed, a prerequisite of paternalism is our assumption that 'the homeless' cannot be trusted, built on the premise that 'they' are mostly dangerous and unpredictable. Yet data suggest that in most crimes involving a person experiencing homelessness, it is the person experiencing homelessness who is the victim, usually at the hands of a housed assailant."
"Programs like Miracle Money and the New Leaf Project challenge the stereotype that giving money to people experiencing homelessness will lead to waste or mismanagement. In the New Leag Project, those who received the lump sum spent fewer nights in shelters, and consequently saved the shelter system about $405,000 over the year, or approximately $8,100 per person - a net savings of $600 compared to the $7,500 per person that was distributed as a lump sum. 'The most efficient way to spend money on the homeless might be to give it to them,' as stated in a prescient 2004 article in the +Economist+."
"As such, one of the primary cultural narratives in the United States is an individual responsibility. Under this narrative, homelessness is an abject individual failure; there is little regard for how a person experiencing homelessness got to the situation they are in, much less how so many of the rest of us 'housed people' rely on our social support systems to get by."
"I always tell people that you can call me anything that you want. You can call me Arnold. You can call me Schwarzenegger. You can call me the Austrian oak. You can call me Schwarzy. You can call me Arnie. But don't ever, ever call me a self-made man.
But this is so important for you to understand. I didn't make it that far on my own. I mean, to accept that credit or that medal, would discount every single person that has helped me get here today, that gave me advice, that made an effort, that lifted me up when I fell. And it gives the wrong impression that we can do it all alone. None of us can. The whole concept of the self-made man or woman is a myth.[...]
Like everyone, to get to where I am, I stood on the shoulders of giants. My life was built on a foundation of parents, coaches, and teachers; of kind souls who lent couches or gym back rooms where I could sleep; of mentors who shared wisdom and advice; of idols who motivated me from the pages of magazines (and, as my life grew, from personal interaction)."
"+There but for the grace of God go I.+"
"While there are many factors that contribute to America's homelessness crisis, the availability and affordability of housing are the most significant;"
"A 2012 study by the +Washington Post+ found that when looking at total tax expenditures by the government rather than narrowly defined 'government benefits,' 24% of expenditures went to the top 1% of earners. Only 3% of tax expenditures went to the bottom 20%."
"In groundbreaking research, Dennis Culhane, one of the nation's leading researchers on homelessness, found that the cost of providing housing and services to people experiencing homelessness is estimated to be almost 50% lower than the cost associated with health care and incarceration alone if nothing is done. A 2020 study in Canada indicates that 'on average, it costs $87,000 per year to support a person using hospitals, jails, courts, and emergency services, because they don't have a home. But once that person has a home, the cost of their housing and [support services] decrease to approximately $30,500 per year, representing a 65% reduction.'"
"In fact, most studies put the life expectancy of people experiencing homelessness as 20 to 30 years shorter than their stably housed counterparts, a jaw-dropping difference."
"Based on their review of a large number of studies, Tobin and Murphy suggest that around 45% of individuals experiencing homelessness receive income from having at least one job, and many of the rest, about 40% cannot work as a result of disability."
"[T]he total subsidy for the mortgage interest deduction exceeded 'the entire budgets for the Departments of Education, Justice, and Energy combined' in 2015, and...the homeowner's net worth was 36 times greater than the average renter's that year."
"The federal public benefit system, intended to help those in poverty, is significantly underfunded and shamefully inaccessible to people experiencing homelessness due to bureaucratic barriers such as lack of a permanent mailing address, reliable transportation, and documentation, along with difficulty determining eligibility, completing complex application processes, and the ease in which life-saving benefits can be lost."
"Housing status is considered by medical practitioners to be a more accurate metric for establishing disease risk than diet, exercise, medical history, or even biological age. Housing is health care, and its absence is a death sentence."
"As one example, starting in 2012 Los Angeles County began identifying frequent utilizers of the ED, moving them into supportive housing and providing additional physical and mental health services there. Among the 3,500 individuals experiencing homelessness who were moved off the streets into housing, ED visits declined by a whopping 70%, saving the county $6.5 million, or $1.20 for every dollar spent on the program. Once placed into supportive housing, these formerly unhoused individuals experienced gret health improvements: they reported fewer hospitalizations, fewer unmet physical and mental health needs, and being significantly happier."
"Though many deinstitutionalized patients became homeless, many more ended up in jails and prisons. In the 1970s, the number of incarcerated individuals with severe mental illness was around 5%. In the 1980s, this figure rose to 10%, and in the 1990s, to 15%. Between 2007 and 2012, the estimate rose to 20%-40%."
"The numbers are harrowing: between 15% and 20% of state and federal prisoners experienced homelessness immediately prior to their incarceration. Forty percent said they had been homeless at some point during the past several years. This represents an overrepresentation of people experiencing homelessness moving into incarceration of at least 10 times the standardized estimate for the general US adult population."
"In the United States, having a criminal record casts a very wide, lingering shadow. A criminal record can make it impossible to secure housing, access life-saving benefits, gain stable employment, and more. As one indication of how destabilizing incarceration is, individuals who have been incarcerated once are 7 times more likely to experience homelessness, while those incarcerated more than once are 13 times more likely."
"As Michelle Alexander points out in her landmark book +The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness+, 'Most people branded felons, in fact, are not sentenced to prison [...] [they are] barred from public housing by law, discriminated against by private landlords, ineligible for food stamps, forced to 'check the box' indicating a felony conviction on employment applications for nearly every job, and denied licenses for a wide range of professions.' These barriers, specific to incarceration, are compounded by the many barriers to housing and employment poor people face in this country in general: credit checks, income requirements, high security deposits, and the like."
"For the 2020-2021 school year, the National Center on Homeless Education found that 1,096,669 public school children experienced homelessness, and another 1 million children under the age of six years old experienced homelessness, out of the approximately 6 million people who experience homelessness each year in the United States. This is 34.9% of the total population, or more than one in every three people experiencing homelessness under the Department of Education's definition and our estimates."
"A staggering 36% of young adults who age out of the foster care system report experiencing homelessness by the time they are 26 years old. For Black youth in foster care, this risk of homelessness is even higher, about 60%."
"But the next time you hear someone talk about homelessness as 'a choice' or in even more derogatory terms, consider asking them if they believe that the more than one in three young people who age out of foster care into homelessness are somehow making a choice or are otherwise 'failed' individuals."
"While reasons for each move vary, 'more than a third of foster children and youth experience more than two placements each year, meaning their living arrangements change at least twice a year,' while an average foster youth moves 6.5 times while in care. Each school move results in a four- to six-month loss of academic achievement for foster care youth."
"[M]ost formerly unhoused tenants appear in eviction proceedings without legal representation, and consequently lose over 90% of the time. However, if the tenant is able to secure adequate legal representation, they successfully defeat the eviction almost 90% of the time."
"For individuals experiencing homelessness with substance use disorders, treatment programs have proven to be effective by emphasizing the importance of concurrently meeting various needs like 'assistance with accessing food, clothing, shelter/housing, identification papers, financial assistance and entitlements, legal aid, medical and dental care, psychiatric care, counseling, job training, and employment services.'"
"It is simply unconscionable that 65% of the prison population has an active substance use disorder."
"Like them, he sat on the other end of the bench eating his sandwich. He never once looked up at them, not even a glance in their direction, keeping his head low under the shade of his cap. Passersby smiled warmly at Amanda and her mom, but not at the man on the other end of the bench. They were three people eating waffle fries on a Saturday afternoon on a bench, yet the world only saw two of them: a kindergartener and her mom. For the man, the mellowness of Southern hospitality wasn't offered. He received no soft grins, no waves, no 'how y'all doing todays.' There was neither kindness nor acknowledgement of his presence."
"We believe the risk is not in sometimes being wrong on an incredibly multifaceted, intersectional issue like homelessness, but in not having the courage to be wrong, by not asking the hard questions of ourselves and each other, and listening to what we may hear. Questions like, What might it look like to respond to the homelessness crisis of today with humanity at the forefront?"
"In the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake and fire, some 250,000 residents of San Francisco were displaced, establishing makeshift camps in park areas and in burnt-out ruins of buildings. For a short period of time, more than half of the city's 400,000 residents homelessness.
In response, the city did not pass anti-camping ordinances. Law enforcement was not mobilized to raze tents and confiscate belongings. Local residents whose homes withstood the brunt of the disaster did not join together to form anti-survivor, not-in-my-backyard protests.
Instead, city officials and local residents rallied together to help. 'As winter approached, the city built 5,300 small wooden cottages for those in need of housing' while 'the army housed 20,000 refugees in military-style tent camps.' Camps formed playgroups for kids and dining halls for individuals and families, which became the centers for social life. Tenants paid $2 a month toward the $50 price of their earthquake cottage, many assembled in Golden Gate Park. After paying off their new home, the owners were required to move their cottages out of the camp, leaving earthquake cottages scattered throughout San Francisco, in an early example of scattered site housing. In June 1908, just two years after one of the most devastating disasters in American history, the last camp closed; 250,000 unhoused survivors had been housed."
"So now that you have spent many hours with us through these pages (thank you!), we invite you to commit an additional hour or two within the next 30 days to get to know one of your neighbors experiencing homelessness, and thus take an initial step toward helping to end relational poverty on the streets."
"As Aboriginal activists said in the 1970s, 'If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.'"
"As the Talmud wisely reminds us, 'Whoever saves a single life [...] saved the whole world,' including our own."
"For despite the cliché, not every challenge can or should be neatly wrapped up in a bow of 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.' Traumas ae not just obstacles to overcome and later highlight as part of your sterling biography: they are traumas. Share yours, not as a medal on your jacket or as part of a dispiriting game of comparison but as a wound from a familiar war, one that your neughbors experiencing homelessness are almost certainly still facing: a grim health prognosis, emergency surgery, job loss and prolonged period of unemployment, eviction, wildfire that took nearly everything, domestic violence, addiction, poverty, childhood trauma, unfathomable death of a family member, debilitating injury, incarceration, falling out with a loved one, untreated clinical depression, isolation and loneliness, shame and self-loathing, and other hard human experiences."
"In a sense, we each need to find our own Uncle Mark: someone we love, whom we could never imagine walking by."
February 14, 2025
LOVED IT!!! Such an eye opening story!
April 16, 2025
An empathic, direct and well written experience that leads with love and ways to support the homeless community. I’m going back to school to become a social worker and this feels like required reading.
March 6, 2024
WOWWW. READ THIS. (Full review below)
"𝘐 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘻𝘦𝘥 𝘐 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘩𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘐 𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘮𝘺 𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 — 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘐 𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘮𝘺 𝘧𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘴."
This book. My gosh. I read it in January, at the beginning of 2024, but I can see it being my favourite of the year (yes, it's THAT good)! Read it — it should be mandatory reading, honestly. Adler and Burnes (et al.) explore and explain homelessness and destigmatize how people become homeless and stay homeless. They explore the social isolation that comes with it, the dehumanization of using "homeless" as an adjective to describe a person rather than keeping the person at the forefront, and they discuss the systems in place that pre-dispose populations to homelessness. The book disbands a lot of preconceived notions, and then also offers how we can help — or even better, what we can learn from our neighbours experiencing homelessness. It is data-based BUT it's also experience-focused, which I loved. I loved reading people's own experiences, I loved that they interviewed real people — I feel like that's what made it really hit home. In case that doesn't convince you to read it, it also mentions other great books including Just Mercy, The Tyranny of Merit (TBR) and Evicted (TBR). When We Walk By is just such an amazing book! So well done, and clearly, I'd highly highly recommend it.
Thank you to Netgalley for putting it on my radar (although I didn't read and review it in time, and ended up listening to it on Audible).
There are so many quotes I could share but let me end with this one:
"𝘐𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘱 𝘮𝘦, 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 — 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘪𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘭𝘪𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘴 𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘶𝘱 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘭𝘦𝘵 𝘶𝘴 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬 𝘵𝘰𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳."
"𝘐 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘻𝘦𝘥 𝘐 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘩𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘐 𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘮𝘺 𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 — 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘐 𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘮𝘺 𝘧𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘴."
This book. My gosh. I read it in January, at the beginning of 2024, but I can see it being my favourite of the year (yes, it's THAT good)! Read it — it should be mandatory reading, honestly. Adler and Burnes (et al.) explore and explain homelessness and destigmatize how people become homeless and stay homeless. They explore the social isolation that comes with it, the dehumanization of using "homeless" as an adjective to describe a person rather than keeping the person at the forefront, and they discuss the systems in place that pre-dispose populations to homelessness. The book disbands a lot of preconceived notions, and then also offers how we can help — or even better, what we can learn from our neighbours experiencing homelessness. It is data-based BUT it's also experience-focused, which I loved. I loved reading people's own experiences, I loved that they interviewed real people — I feel like that's what made it really hit home. In case that doesn't convince you to read it, it also mentions other great books including Just Mercy, The Tyranny of Merit (TBR) and Evicted (TBR). When We Walk By is just such an amazing book! So well done, and clearly, I'd highly highly recommend it.
Thank you to Netgalley for putting it on my radar (although I didn't read and review it in time, and ended up listening to it on Audible).
There are so many quotes I could share but let me end with this one:
"𝘐𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘱 𝘮𝘦, 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 — 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘪𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘭𝘪𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘴 𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘶𝘱 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘭𝘦𝘵 𝘶𝘴 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬 𝘵𝘰𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳."
June 12, 2023
This was an incredibly well-researched and detailed book. I really think everyone needs to take the time to read this and learn about the ways our society/culture stacks the odds against people. I appreciated that this book also offered ways to help people experiencing homelessness on the individual level, as well as what organizations, non-profits, shelters, companies, etc need to be doing too. The authors also provide readers with a vast supply of vocabulary I didn't even realize I didn't know: mixed-income housing, relational poverty, etc.
I believe this would be a great required read for college freshman, whether in an English class or political science.
I believe this would be a great required read for college freshman, whether in an English class or political science.
June 12, 2024
“When We Walk By offers an intimate look at how and why we unwittingly treat those without stable housing as problems to be solved rather than people to be loved” (Adler 14).
When We Walk By is a book that every person should read. Kevin Adler and Donald Burns did an incredible job breaking down the causes, impacts and possible solutions surrounding the issue of homelessness in America through a variety of different lenses. Adler and Burns explained how this issue is much more layered than more people realize and do so by including scientific research, personal testimonies from individuals they knew, government data and more. The book was informative, upsetting, and led to self-reflection on my own attitudes and actions. As someone who lives in a city, I regularly see individuals who are experiencing homelessness but this book is important for those who are not regularly seeing these individuals.
“No one should go through homelessness. But as long as homelessness exists, we believe no one should go through homelessness alone — for who among us can get through life alone?” (Adler 222)
When We Walk By is a book that every person should read. Kevin Adler and Donald Burns did an incredible job breaking down the causes, impacts and possible solutions surrounding the issue of homelessness in America through a variety of different lenses. Adler and Burns explained how this issue is much more layered than more people realize and do so by including scientific research, personal testimonies from individuals they knew, government data and more. The book was informative, upsetting, and led to self-reflection on my own attitudes and actions. As someone who lives in a city, I regularly see individuals who are experiencing homelessness but this book is important for those who are not regularly seeing these individuals.
“No one should go through homelessness. But as long as homelessness exists, we believe no one should go through homelessness alone — for who among us can get through life alone?” (Adler 222)
July 16, 2025
This book did a lot of things well- presented facts on homelessness, called people out and in to the conversation on our unhoused neighbors, and offered many different avenues for helping end homelessness. I thought the section on what individuals can do was helpful- acknowledging/taking time to know our unhoused community members, and that new socks and toothbrushes/toothpaste can be especially helpful for people we may encounter without shelter. I also thought the commentary on the economics of homelessness were intriguing- it costs taxpayers much more to support homeless community members through emergency services like ER visits, first responder callouts, and jail time than it does to house someone for a year. Prison is especially expensive compared to paying for someone's housing. I also thought that the stats on eviction were compelling- if you have a lawyer you're MUCH less likely to get evicted than if you have no lawyer.
That said, I also had a hard time reading this book. There were many (long) sections that felt like more of impassioned speech making than actually educating. I think this book would have a hard time reaching people who weren't already inclined to agree with the author's political viewpoints becuase of how much impassioned rhetoric there was. I also felt like there was a lot of fact spit up going on. I read this book while reading a data driven guide to making child rearing decisions written by an economist and WOW- very different presentations of facts and data. I wish this one had dove more into the data that it was presenting us, instead of just regurgitating it. There were a lot of studies that I'm guessing had many potentially confounding variables that went unaddressed, no discussion of experimental design methodologies, and also no addressing counterpoints. Those three things really weakened a lot of points the authors made. For example- prison is presented as something that is bad and exacerbates homelessness. Fair! However, I wish they had addressed the fact that prison also usually increases the overall health of people who were previously unhoused (especially chronically unhoused) and can provide an important place for detox that otherwise might not be available. I think the authors could have defeated those points- had they addressed them. Leaving them out felt like ignorance or refusal to see the other side of things, even if just to address them. I also chafed at the fact that domestic violence wasn't identified as a cause for homelessness, given my professional role but also the stats that 1 in 4 women are homeless because of DV. Seems like it would have been worth addressing.
This might be a good book for someone who was already on the far left regarding homelessness, but I wouldn't reccomend it to anyone else with any other political viewpoint.
That said, I also had a hard time reading this book. There were many (long) sections that felt like more of impassioned speech making than actually educating. I think this book would have a hard time reaching people who weren't already inclined to agree with the author's political viewpoints becuase of how much impassioned rhetoric there was. I also felt like there was a lot of fact spit up going on. I read this book while reading a data driven guide to making child rearing decisions written by an economist and WOW- very different presentations of facts and data. I wish this one had dove more into the data that it was presenting us, instead of just regurgitating it. There were a lot of studies that I'm guessing had many potentially confounding variables that went unaddressed, no discussion of experimental design methodologies, and also no addressing counterpoints. Those three things really weakened a lot of points the authors made. For example- prison is presented as something that is bad and exacerbates homelessness. Fair! However, I wish they had addressed the fact that prison also usually increases the overall health of people who were previously unhoused (especially chronically unhoused) and can provide an important place for detox that otherwise might not be available. I think the authors could have defeated those points- had they addressed them. Leaving them out felt like ignorance or refusal to see the other side of things, even if just to address them. I also chafed at the fact that domestic violence wasn't identified as a cause for homelessness, given my professional role but also the stats that 1 in 4 women are homeless because of DV. Seems like it would have been worth addressing.
This might be a good book for someone who was already on the far left regarding homelessness, but I wouldn't reccomend it to anyone else with any other political viewpoint.
December 5, 2023
A well-reasearched and readable book examining homelessness in the United States. The authors explore the actual stories of people experiencing homelessness (not stereotypes), examine how systemic issues perpetuate homelessness, and explore actions to take - both micro and macro to lift people out of homelessness and decrease the odds of experiencing it.
February 13, 2024
I hope this becomes a curriculum staple in college and grad school programs across the country. It’s comprehensive in its assessment of the complex nature of homelessness and the solutions section (policy! Rezoning! Creative ideas like tiny home villages! Miracle messages! Basic income!) is fantastic. I could go on and on, but instead I’ll just say READ IT!!
December 18, 2023
Really profound book on homelessness and it really breaks a lot of the prejudice I have on our homeless neighbors.
I think more than anything else, this book promotes empathy and humanity. It runs a tad bit too long at times and the author repeats the same thing quite a few times, but I still really enjoyed it.
Blog: http://literaturesandmovies.com
I think more than anything else, this book promotes empathy and humanity. It runs a tad bit too long at times and the author repeats the same thing quite a few times, but I still really enjoyed it.
Blog: http://literaturesandmovies.com
February 7, 2024
Very well-written picture of the circumstances, causes, and possible solutions to the crisis of people experiencing homelessness. The author highlights the structural problems such as the mortgage interest tax deduction costing the government way more than any programs meant to house people with low incomes.
September 16, 2024
This is a beautifully written book, that weaves stories of lived experience with facts and information about individuals experiencing homelessness. It will challenge you to think differently about the people you walk by everyday…
December 24, 2023
This book provides a necessary perspective shift on poverty and homelessness. Deeply researched and extremely empathetic. Should be required reading!
Read
April 4, 2024gift from my dad - had never actually read a book on homelessness in the US so it was a useful zoom out exercise
Displaying 1 - 30 of 181 reviews