There are over a half million people experiencing homelessness in the United States, nearly 160,000 of them are children, and nearly 38,000 are veterans. This book reports on the national homelessness crisis.

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.

"By the second or third day that you're homeless, in the car with all your clothes, your pots and pans, everything, having to wash yourself in a public rest room, you logically start to feel dirty. You prefer to use the drive-through [at fast-food restaurants] where no one will see you. You begin to hide your family." (Invisible Nation). More than 2.5 million children are homeless in the United States every year. In every state, children are living packed in with relatives, or in cars, or motel rooms, or emergency shelters, the only constant being too many people in too little space. In a vividly-written narrative, experienced journalist Richard Schweid takes us on a spirited journey through this "invisible nation," giving us front-row dispatches. Based on in-depth reporting from five major cities, Invisible Nation looks backward at the historical context of family homelessness, as well as forward at what needs to be done to alleviate this widespread, although often hidden, poverty. Invisible Nation is a riveting must-read for anyone who wants to know what is happening to the millions of families living at the bottom of the economy.

From Britain's 'Generation Rent' to Hong Kong's notorious 'cage homes', societies around the world are facing a housing crisis of unprecedented proportions. The social consequences have been profound, with a lack of affordable housing resulting in overcrowding, homelessness, broken families and, in many countries, a sharp decline in fertility. In Broken Cities, Deborah Potts offers a provocative new perspective on the global housing crisis arguing that the problem lies mainly with demand rather than supply. Potts shows how market-set rates of pay and incomes for vast numbers of households in the world's largest cities in the global South and North are simply too low to rent or buy any housing that is legal, planned and decent. As the influence of free market economics has increased, the situation has worsened. Potts argues that the crisis needs radical solutions. With the world becoming increasingly urbanized, this book provides a timely and urgent account of one of the most pressing social challenges of the 21st century. Exploring the effects of the housing crisis across the global North and South, Broken Cities is a warning of the greater crises to come if these issues are not addressed.

Photographer Jerome Mallmann has captured images of New Yorkers in unguarded moments since the late 1960s. Images in this exhibition organized by the Elvehjem Museum of Art (now the Chazen Museum of Art) show a dispossessed population, those driven or escaping to the streets of New York to indulge in the compulsion to smoke or the need to sleep. The works are the result of twenty years of photography, always with small cameras, fast film, and without a flash, in order to intrude as little as possible into subjects' lives. Candid and spontaneous, the photographs capture the complex rituals and terrifying realities of life on the streets of New York.
Distributed for the Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison

This publication provides analysis and recommendations to support the Yangon Region Government to implement its affordable housing agenda and related policies. Myanmar's housing sector is struggling to cope with rapid urbanization, internal migration, and new demand arising from recent economic growth. These challenges are most apparent in the Yangon Region, where estimates suggest there will be a housing shortage of 1.3 million units by 2030. After assessing the current housing market situation in Yangon, the publication identifies reform options and offers practical recommendations.

Poverty in Canada s inner cities is deep, complex, racialized and often intergenerational. In this collection of essays published over the past decade, Jim Silver argues that urban poverty today includes not only low incomes, but in all too many cases also poor housing, poor health, low educational achievement, high levels of neighbourhood violence, racism, colonialism and social exclusion. As a result many poor people experience low levels of self-esteem and self-confidence and may blame themselves, which is reinforced by the dominant blame-the-victim discourse about poverty. Silver argues that today s urban poverty is qualitatively different than the urban poverty of forty years ago, and that there are no quick, easy or one-dimensional solutions. In Solving Poverty, Jim Silver, a veteran scholar actively engaged in anti-poverty efforts in Winnipeg s inner city for decades, offers an on-the-ground analysis of this form of poverty. Silver focuses particularly on the urban Aboriginal experience, and describes a variety of creative and effective urban Aboriginal community development initiatives, as well as other anti-poverty initiatives that have been successful in Winnipeg s inner city. In the concluding chapter Silver offers a comprehensive, pan-Canadian strategy to dramatically reduce the incidence of urban poverty in Canada."

Vaya the film is based on the lives of four young men from the Homeless Writer’s Project: David Majoka, Anthony Mafela, Madoda Ntuli and Tshabalira Lebakeng, and rooted in their experiences of coming to Johannesburg. Vaya the book brings you the people and stories that inspired the award-winning film.

The book provides a rare lens into life on the margins of Johannesburg. The stories are intimate and hard hitting, funny and heartbreaking, full of courage and humanity in a world that is both capricious and unforgiving. Stories of living on the street, of finding family and friendship in unusual places, and coming to the city full of hope and promise only to be betrayed by the very people one trusts most.

Mark Lewis’s haunting photographs bring into sharp focus life in the underbelly of the city.

The problem of homelessness in America underpins the definition of an American city: what it is, who it is for, what it does, and why it matters. And the problem of the American city is epitomized in public space. Mean Streets offers, in a single, sustained argument, a theory of the social and economic logic behind the historical development, evolution, and especially the persistence of homelessness in the contemporary American city. By updating and revisiting thirty years of research and thinking on this subject, Don Mitchell explores the conditions that produce and sustain homelessness and how its persistence relates to the way capital works in the urban built environment. He also addresses the historical and social origins that created the boundary between public and private. Consequently, he unpacks the structure, meaning, and governance of urban public space and its uses. Mitchell traces his argument through two sections: a broadly historical overview of how homelessness has been managed in public spaces, followed by an exploration of recent Supreme Court jurisprudence that expands our national discussion. Beyond the mere regulation of the homeless and the poor, homelessness has metastasized more recently, Mitchell argues, to become a general issue that affects all urbanites.

Being homeless in one's homeland is a colonial legacy for many Indigenous people in settler societies. The construction of Commonwealth nation-states from colonial settler societies depended on the dispossession of Indigenouspeoples from their lands. The legacy of that dispossession and related attempts at assimilation that disrupted Indigenous practices, languages, and cultures-including patterns of housing and land use-can be seen today in the disproportionate number of Indigenous people affected by homelessness in both rural and urban settings. Essays in this collection explore the meaning and scope of Indigenous homelessness in the Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. They argue that effective policy and support programs aimed at relieving Indigenous homelessness must be rooted in Indigenous conceptions of home, land, and kinship, and cannot ignore the context of systemic inequality, institutionalization, landlessness, among other things, that stem from a history of colonialism. Indigenous Homelessness: Perspectives from Canada, New Zealand and Australia provides a comprehensive exploration of the Indigenous experience of homelessness. It testifies to ongoing cultural resilience and lays the groundwork for practices and policies designed to better address the conditions that lead to homelessness among Indigenous peoples.

In this book, Brian Lund builds on contemporary housing crisis narratives, which tend to focus on the growth of a younger 'generation rent,' to include the differential effects of class, age, gender, ethnicity and place, across the United Kingdom. Current differences reflect long-established cleavages in UK society, and help to explain why housing crises persist. Placing the UK crises in their global contexts, Lund provides a critical examination of proposed solutions according to their impacts on different pathways through the housing system. As the first detailed analysis of the multifaceted origins, impact and potential solutions of the housing crisis, this book will be of vital interest to policy practitioners, professionals and academics across a wide range of areas, including housing studies, urban studies, geography, social policy, sociology, planning and politics.

Accessible and affordable housing can enable community living, maximize independence, and promote health for vulnerable populations. However, the United States faces a shortage of affordable and accessible housing for low-income older adults and individuals living with disabilities. This shortage is expected to grow over the coming years given the population shifts leading to greater numbers of older adults and of individuals living with disabilities. Housing is a social determinant of health and has direct effects on health outcomes, but this relationship has not been thoroughly investigated. In December 2016, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a public workshop to better understand the importance of affordable and accessible housing for older adults and people with disabilities, the barriers to providing this housing, the design principles for making housing accessible for these individuals, and the features of programs and policies that successfully provide affordable and accessible housing that supports community living for older adults and people with disabilities. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop. Table of Contents Front Matter 1 Introduction 2 Keynote Presentations 3 Affordability of Housing That Supports Health and Independence for Vulnerable Older Adults and Individuals with Disabilities 4 Design Features of Accessible Housing for Older Adults and Individuals with Disabilities 5 Models Connecting Affordable Housing and Services as a Platform for Health and Independence 6 Reactors Panel on Policy Implications and Research Needs References Appendix A: Workshop Agenda Appendix B: Biographical Sketches of Workshop Speakers and Reactors