What is it like to be born dirt-poor in South Africa? Clinton Chauke knows, having been raised alongside his two sisters in a remote village bordering the Kruger National Park and a squatter camp outside Pretoria. Clinton is a young village boy when awareness dawns of how poor his family really is: there’s no theft in the village because there’s absolutely nothing to steal. But fire destroys the family hut, and they decide to move back to the city. There he is forced to confront the rough-and-tumble of urban life as a ‘bumpkin’.

He is Venda, whereas most of his classmates speak Zulu or Tswana and he has to face their ridicule while trying to pick up two or more languages as fast as possible. With great self-awareness, Clinton negotiates the pitfalls and lifelines of a young life: crime and drugs, football, religion, friendship, school, circumcision and, ultimately, becoming a man. Throughout it all, he displays determination as well as a self-deprecating humour that will keep you turning the pages till the end.

Clinton’s story is one that will give you hope that even in a sea of poverty there are those that refuse to give up and, ultimately, succeed.

Amid evictions, raids, killings, the drug trade, and fire, inner-city Johannesburg residents seek safety and a home. A grandmother struggles to keep her granddaughter as she is torn away from her. A mother seeks healing in the wake of her son’s murder. And displaced by a city’s drive for urban regeneration, a group of blind migrants try to carve out an existence.

The Blinded City recounts the history of inner-city Johannesburg from 2010 to 2019, primarily from the perspectives of the unlawful occupiers of spaces known as hijacked buildings, bad buildings or dark buildings. Tens of thousands of residents, both South African and foreign national, live in these buildings in dire conditions. This book tells the story of these sites, and the court cases around them, ones that strike at the centre of who has the right to occupy the city.

In February 2010, while Johannesburg prepared for the FIFA World Cup, the South Gauteng High Court ordered the eviction of the unlawful occupiers of an abandoned carpet factory on Saratoga Avenue and that the city’s Metropolitan Municipality provide temporary emergency accommodation for the evicted. The case, which became known as Blue Moonlight and went to the Constitutional Court, catalysed a decade of struggles over housing and eviction in Johannesburg.

The Blinded City chronicles this case, among others, and the aftermath – a tumultuous period in the city characterised by recurrent dispossessions, police and immigration operations, outbursts of xenophobic violence, and political and legal change. All through the decade, there is the backdrop of successive mayors and their attempts to ‘clean up’ the city, and the struggles of residents and urban housing activists for homes and a better life.

The interwoven narratives present a compelling mosaic of life in post-apartheid Johannesburg, one of the globe’s most infamous and vital cities.

The uplifting true story. A Sunday Times bestseller, shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize.

The story of the couple who lost everything and embarked on a journey, not of escape, but salvation.

Just days after Raynor learns that Moth, her husband of 32 years, is terminally ill, the couple lose their home and their livelihood. With nothing left and little time, they make the brave and impulsive decision to walk the 630 miles of the sea-swept South West Coast Path, from Somerset to Dorset via Devon and Cornwall.

They have almost no money for food or shelter and must carry only the essentials for survival on their backs as they live wild in the ancient, weathered landscape of cliffs, sea and sky. Yet through every step, every encounter, and every test along the way, their walk becomes a remarkable journey.

The Salt Path is an unflinchingly honest, inspiring and life-affirming true story of coming to terms with grief and the healing power of the natural world. Ultimately, it is a portrayal of home, and how it can be lost, rebuilt and rediscovered in the most unexpected ways.

In the decade following the housing crisis, Americans remain enthusiastic about the prospect of owning a home. Homeownership is a symbol of status attainment in the United States, and for many Americans, buying a home is the most important financial investment they will ever make. We are deeply committed to an ideology of homeownership that presents homeownership as a tool for building stronger communities and crafting better citizens. However, in No Place Like Home, Brian McCabe argues that such beliefs about the public benefits of homeownership are deeply mischaracterized. As owning a home has emerged as the most important way to build wealth in the United States, it has also reshaped the way citizens become involved in their communities. Rather than engaging as public-spirited stewards of civic life, McCabe demonstrates that homeowners often engage in their communities as a way to protect their property values. This involvement contributes to the politics of exclusion, and prevents particular citizens from gaining access to high-opportunity neighborhoods, thereby reinforcing patterns of residential segregation. A thorough analysis of the politics of homeownership, No Place Like Home prompts readers to reconsider the power of homeownership to strengthen citizenship and build better communities.

With urban poverty rising and affordable housing disappearing, the homeless and other "disorderly" people continue to occupy public space in many American cities. Concerned about the alleged ill effects their presence inflicts on property values and public safety, many cities have wholeheartedly embraced "zero-tolerance" or "broken window" policing efforts to clear the streets of unwanted people. Through an almost completely unnoticed set of practices, these people are banned from occupying certain spaces. Once zoned out, they are subject to arrest if they return-effectively banished from public places.
Banished is the first exploration of these new tactics that dramatically enhance the power of the police to monitor and arrest thousands of city dwellers. Drawing upon an extensive body of data, the authors chart the rise of banishment in Seattle, a city on the leading edge of this emerging trend, to establish how it works and explore its ramifications. They demonstrate that, although the practice allows police and public officials to appear responsive to concerns about urban disorder, it is a highly questionable policy: it is expensive, does not reduce crime, and does not address the underlying conditions that generate urban poverty. Moreover, interviews with the banished themselves reveal that exclusion makes their lives and their path to self-sufficiency immeasurably more difficult.
At a time when more and more cities and governments in the U.S. and Europe resort to the criminal justice system to solve complex social problems, Banished provides a vital and timely challenge to exclusionary strategies that diminish the life circumstances and rights of those it targets.

Music Downtown Eastside draws on two decades of research in one of North America's poorest urban areas to illustrate how human rights can be promoted through music. Harrison's examination of how gentrification, grant funding, and community organizations affect the success or failure of human rights-focused musical initiatives offers insights into the complex relationship between culture, poverty, and human rights that have global implications and applicability. The book takes the reader into popular music jams and music therapy sessions offered to the poor in churches, community centers and health organizations. Harrison analyzes the capabilities music-making develops, and musical moments where human rights are respected, promoted, threatened, or violated. The book offers insights on the relationship between music and poverty, a social deprivation that diminishes capabilities and rights. It contributes to the human rights literature by examining critically how human rights can be strengthened in cultural practices and policy.

Experiences of the struggle for housing, ignited by the lack of social and affordable housing, have led to the establishing of shared and self-managed housing areas. In such a context, it becomes crucially important to re-think the need to define common urban worlds "from below". Here, Penny Travlou and Stavros Stavridis trace contemporary practices of urban commoning through which people re-define housing economies. Connecting to a rich literature on the importance of commons and of practices of commoning for the creation of emancipated societies, the authors discuss whether housing struggles and co-habitation experiences may contribute in crucial ways to the development of a commoning culture. The authors explore a variety of urban contexts through global case studies from across the Global North and South, in search of concrete examples that illustrate the potentialities of urban commoning.

CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2017 The first social and cultural history of vagrancy between 1650 and 1750, this book combines sources from across England and the Atlantic world to describe the shifting and desperate experiences of the very poorest and most marginalized of people in early modernity; the outcasts, the wandering destitute, the disabled veteran, the aged labourer, the solitary pregnant woman on the road and those referred to as vagabonds and beggars are all explored in this comprehensive account of the subject. Using a rich array of archival and literary sources, Vagrancy in English Culture and Society, 1650-1750 offers a history not only of the experiences of vagrants themselves, but also of how the settled 'better sort' perceived vagrancy, how it was culturally represented in both popular and elite literature as a shadowy underworld of dissembling rogues, gypsies, and pedlars, and how these representations powerfully affected the lives of vagrants themselves. Hitchcock's is an important study for all scholars and students interested in the social and cultural history of early modern England.

Radical Discipleship engages the structural evils of homelessness, mass incarceration, and capital punishment, arguing that to be faithful to the gospel, Christians must become disciples of, not simply believers in, Jesus. Jennifer McBride argues that disciples must work to overcome the social evils that bar beloved community. Unfolding the social and political character of the good news, the book organically connects liturgy with activism and theological reflection enabling a radical discipleship that takes seriously the Jesus of the Gospels.

Both theoretically informed and empirically rich, Defensible Space makes an important conceptual contribution to policy mobilities thinking, to policy and practice, and also to practitioners handling of complex spatial concepts. Critically examines the geographical concept Defensible Space, which has been influential in designing out crime to date, and has been applied to housing estates in the UK, North America, Europe and beyond Evaluates the movement/mobility/mobilisation of defensible space from the US to the UK and into English housing policy and practice Explores the multiple ways the concept of defensible space was interpreted and implemented, as it circulated from national to local level and within particular English housing estates Critiquing and pushing forwards work on policy mobilities, the authors illustrate for the first time how transfer mechanisms worked at both a policy and practitioner level Drawing on extensive archival research, oral histories and in-depth interviews, this important book reveals defensible space to be ambiguous, uncertain in nature, neither proven or disproven scientifically

Pascal D. Bazzell brings the marginal ecclesiology of a Filipino ecclesial community facing homelessness (FECH) into contemporary ecclesiological conversation in order to deepen the ecumenical understanding of today's ecclesial reality. He contributes relevant data to support a theory of an ecclesial-oriented paradigm that fosters ecclesial communities within homeless populations. There is an extensive dialogue occurring between ecclesiologies, church planting theories or urban missions and the urban poor. Yet the situation with the homeless population is almost entirely overlooked. The majority of urban mission textbooks do not acknowledge an ecclesial-oriented state of being and suggest that the street-level environment is a place where no discipleship can occur and no church should exist. By presenting the FECH's case study Bazzell emphasizes that it is possible to live on the streets and to grow in the faith of God as an ecclesial community. To be able to describe the FECH's ecclesial narrative, Bazzell develops a local ecclesiological methodology that aims to bridge the gap between more traditional systematic and theoretical (ideal) ecclesiology and practical oriented ecclesiology (e.g. congregational studies) in order to hold together theological and social understandings of the church in its local reality. He articulates a theological framework for the FECH to reflect on who they are (the essence of identity studies), who they are in relationship to God (the essence of theological studies), and what that means for believers in that community as they relate to God and to each other in ways that are true to who they are and to who God intends them to be (the essence of ecclesial studies). The research provides a seldom-heard empirical tour into the FECH's social world and communal identity. The theological findings from the FECH's hermeneutical work on the Gospel of Mark reveal an understanding of church being developed as gathering around Jesus that creates a space for God's presence to be embodied in their ordinary relationships and activities and to invite others to participate in that gathering. Moreover, it addresses ecclesial issues of the supernatural world; honor/shame values; and further develop the neglected image of the familia Dei in classical ecclesiology that encapsulates well the FECH's nature, mission and place.

Disrupting Homelessness unmasks the futile assumptions of our present approaches to homelessness and suggests ways in which Christians and Christian communities can create a prophetic social movement to end poverty and homelessness. The American dream, as conveyed by the media, includes owning a home. Increasingly, people are homeless or precariously housed because of joblessness, foreclosure, or dislocation. Ecclesial responses to homelessness and housing vary. Some Christian organizations focus on fixing the person and the behaviors that contribute to homelessness. Others promote home ownership for low-income households. Employing a disruptive Christian ethics, Laura Stivers criticizes both approaches, outlines an advocacy approach for churches to address the multiple causes of homelessness, and calls us to make a home for all in God's just and compassionate community.

Homelessness in America's cities remains a growing problem. The homeless today face the same challenges as in years past: poverty, tenuous or no ties to family and friends, physical and mental health issues, and substance abuse. Compared to the 1950s to 1970s, more homeless are now sleeping on city streets versus in shelters or single room hotels. Homelessness rates are affected by economic trends, lack of equitable and inclusive healthcare and housing, decline in public assistance programs, and natural and man-made disasters. This collection of essays covers case studies, innovations, practices and policies of municipalities coping with homelessness in the 21st century.

This book examines the nexus between housing and stewardship in peri-urban areas outside of Harare, Zimbabwe. Housing in Zimbabwe explores the factors that shape peri-urban environments into better managed and sustainable areas where housing development is the major activity. Using the Stewardship Theory, or Partnership, Model as the main framework and point of departure, the analysis follows five basic approaches: Biblical-religious, business, environmental, vernacular, and place-based community/grassroots. Chirisa ponders conflicts among the relevant actors, given their contrasting priorities and interests and maintains that such conflicts are perpetuated by such factors as local history, resident income levels, a lack of defined and clear-cut state policies, and commitment by institutions towards the creation of sustainable settlements. The study recommends further application and use of technologies for remote sensing (Geographic Information Systems included) to help monitor and guide development in peri-urban areas with the goal of achieving evidence-based policies. The hope is to create effective tools for stewardship by co-creating an institution focused on urban regional development using scenario and collaborative planning methodologies to avoid chaotic peri-urbanisation.

What is it about the concept of "home" that makes its loss so profound and devastating, and how should the trauma of exile and alienation be approached theologically? M. Jan Holton examines the psychological, social, and theological impact of forced displacement on communities in the Congo and South Sudan and on indigenous Batwa tribespersons in Uganda, as well as on homeless U.S. citizens and on U.S. soldiers returning from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. She draws on ethnographic work in Africa, extensive research in practical theology, sociology, and psychology, as well as on professional work and personal experiences in America and abroad. In doing so she explores how forced displacement disrupts one's connection with the home place and the profound characteristics it fosters that can help people lean toward flourishing spiritually and psychologically throughout their lifetime. Displacement invites a social alienation that can become deeply institutionalized, threatening the moral well being of us all. Longing For Home offers a frame for understanding how communities can respond to refugees and various homeless populations by cultivating hospitality outside of their own comfort zones. This essential study addresses an urgent interreligious global concern and Holton's thoughtful and compelling work offers a constructive model for a sustained practical response.

A groundbreaking account of the early history of rent control Written by one of the country's foremost urban historians, The Great Rent Wars tells the fascinating but little-known story of the battles between landlords and tenants in the nation's largest city from 1917 through 1929. These conflicts were triggered by the post-war housing shortage, which prompted landlords to raise rents, drove tenants to go on rent strikes, and spurred the state legislature, a conservative body dominated by upstate Republicans, to impose rent control in New York, a radical and unprecedented step that transformed landlord-tenant relations. The Great Rent Wars traces the tumultuous history of rent control in New York from its inception to its expiration as it unfolded in New York, Albany, and Washington, D.C. At the heart of this story are such memorable figures as Al Smith, Fiorello H. La Guardia, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, as well as a host of tenants, landlords, judges, and politicians who have long been forgotten. Fogelson also explores the heated debates over landlord-tenant law, housing policy, and other issues that are as controversial today as they were a century ago.

Surviving Poverty carefully examines the experiences of people living below the poverty level, looking in particular at the tension between social isolation and social ties among the poor. Joan Maya Mazelis draws on in-depth interviews with poor people in Philadelphia to explore how they survive and the benefits they gain by being connected to one another. Half of the study participants are members of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, a distinctive organization that brings poor people together in the struggle to survive. The mutually supportive relationships the members create, which last for years, even decades, contrast dramatically with the experiences of participants without such affiliation. In interviews, participants discuss their struggles and hardships, and their responses highlight the importance of cultivating relationships among people living in poverty. Surviving Poverty documents the ways in which social ties become beneficial and sustainable, allowing members to share their skills and resources and providing those living in similar situations a space to unite and speak collectively to the growing and deepening poverty in the United States. The study concludes that productive, sustainable ties between poor people have an enduring and valuable impact. Grounding her study in current debates about the importance of alleviating poverty, Mazelis proposes new modes of improving the lives of the poor. Surviving Poverty is invested in both structural and social change and demonstrates the power support services can have to foster relationships and build sustainable social ties for those living in poverty.

The unprecedented housing and homelessness crisis in Ireland is having profound impacts on Generation Rent, the wellbeing of children, worsening wider inequality and threatening the economy. Hearne contextualises the Irish housing crisis within the broader global housing situation by examining the origins of the crisis in terms of austerity, marketisation and the new era of financialisation, where global investors are making housing unaffordable and turning it into an asset for the wealthy. He brings to the fore the perspectives of those most affected, new housing activists and protesters whilst providing innovative global solutions for a new vision for affordable, sustainable homes for all.

StreetWays: Chronicling the Homeless in Miami is a collection of interviews with 28 homeless individuals living in downtown Miami and Miami Beach. Besides extensive photographs of these people and their lives on the street, the book also includes interviews with social service providers, as well as a detailed analysis of homelessness in the United States and more specifically in Miami. The work concludes with a policy analysis and suggestions for addressing issues of homelessness in Miami and the nation. StreetWays attempts to make clear how and why homelessness occurs, and what the actual lives and experiences of the homeless are about. Through extensive interviews and extensive documentary photographs, a selected group of homeless Miamians lose their invisibility as their experiences, needs and aspirations are reported. The book calls for a better understanding of the experience of homelessness places such as Miami, and of the need to understand homelessness as an issue of diversity and human rights.

Christmas 1975 and Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ is riding high in the charts. In a residential street just outside Cardiff, a persistent knocking breaks the stillness of the evening …

When Rob Parsons, a young lawyer, opens his door he finds a man standing before him clutching a bag of belongings and a frozen chicken. Rob and his wife, Dianne, invite him into their home, cook his chicken and offer him shelter for the night. What happens next is an astonishing story of human kindness, self-learning, incredible pain, unbelievable hope and the sheer power of love to change a life.

A Knock at the Door is the true story of Ronnie Lockwood, a homeless man who entered the home of a young couple, became a dustman and lived as part of their family for over 45 years until his death. But this is not just Ronnie’s story – it is also that of Rob and his family. Outwardly the two men’s lives were worlds apart – as Ronnie emptied rubbish bins, Rob flew on Concorde – and yet, they discovered they had similar struggles. Then the day came, at the lowest moment of the couple’s lives, when they turned to the homeless man for help.

But there were also remarkable turnarounds. Ronnie spent much of his spare time volunteering, including at a homeless centre, and ended up having a £1.6 million well-being centre named after him. Rob left his law practice and he and Dianne began a charity that touches the lives of millions of people.

You will have never read a story like this before, but at its heart is a simple message: whether we are a lawyer or a dustman – tomorrow doesn’t always have to be like yesterday.

Affluent Seattle has one of the highest numbers of unhoused people in the United States. In 2021 an estimated 40,800 people experienced homelessness in Seattle and King County during the year, not counting the significant number of "hidden" homeless people doubled up with friends or living in and out of cheap hotels. In Skid Road Josephine Ensign uncovers the stories of overlooked and long-silenced people who have lived on the margins of society throughout Seattle's history. How, Ensign asks, has a large, socially progressive city like Seattle responded to the health and social needs of people marginalized by poverty, mental illness, addiction, racial/ethnic/sexual identities, and homelessness? Through extensive historical research, Ensign pieces together the lives and deaths of those not included in official histories of the city. Drawing on interviews, she also shares a diversity of voices within contemporary health and social care and public policy debates. Ensign explores the tensions between caregiving and oppression, as well as charity and solidarity, that polarize perspectives on homelessness throughout the country.

Through interviews with 20 homeless and addicted women over a time frame of five years, the author vividly demonstrates how sexual abuse, sexism, and racism are at the base of their problems and how both neo-conservative and neo-liberal theories and prescriptions for solving their problems are unworkable. The author considers the problems of homelessness and addiction and how these problems are linked. She continues by providing statistical profiles of all the interviewees. Ralston outlines the feminist methodology used in the research and raises major questions regarding these issues. She defines and tests the main theories in relation to the women's experiences and perspectives and Uncovers new realities about the situations and problems of welfare recipients and people whom society has usually silenced.

Can American cities respond effectively to pressing social problems? Or, as many scholars have claimed, are urban politics so mired in stasis, gridlock and bureaucratic paralysis that dramatic policy change is impossible? Homelessness in New York City tells the remarkable story of how America's largest city has struggled for more than thirty years to meet the crisis of modern homelessness through the landmark development, since the initiation of the Callahan v Carey litigation in 1979, of a municipal shelter system based on a court-enforced right to shelter. New York City now shelters more than 50,000 otherwise homeless people at an annual cost of more than $1 billion in the largest and most complex shelter system in the world. Establishing the right to shelter was a dramatic break with long established practice. Developing and managing the shelter system required the city to repeatedly overcome daunting challenges, from dealing with mentally ill street dwellers to confronting community opposition to shelter placement. In the course of these efforts many classic dilemmas in social policy and public administration arose. Does adequate provision for the poor create perverse incentives? Can courts manage recalcitrant bureaucracies? Is poverty rooted in economic structures or personal behavior? The tale of how five mayors-Koch, Dinkins, Giuliani, Bloomberg and de Blasio-have wrestled with these problems is one of caution and hope: the task is difficult and success is never unqualified, but positive change is possible. Homelessness in New York City tells the remarkable story of what happened-for good and sometimes less good-when New York established the right to shelter.