Blighted is a powerful narrative about the decades-long decay and remarkable two-year reinvention of Summerdale, an aging apartment community located in one of Atlanta's grittiest corridors. From burnt-out, mold-infested buildings to traumatized classrooms, Blighted unfolds in the voices of ruthless drug dealers, phantom tenants, fearless landlords, the working poor, educators, and visionary local leaders. After purchasing the property from an absentee overseas owner, Marjy Stagmeier and her partners methodically tackled the crisis festering inside the gated 244-unit apartment property. Two years of relentless work later, Stagmeier reveals how the team that she led built community from chaos. Through on-the-ground, in-the-moment interviews with a wide range of stakeholders, Stagmeier demonstrates how marginalized housing perpetuates intergenerational poverty and the collapse of nearby public schools while showing the multifaceted challenges of improving dire living conditions. Blighted offers a unique insider perspective of the political, human, and economic challenges of delivering equitable housing in a market fueled by inflationary prices, insatiable demand, and competing and often dubious agendas. Summerdale's success is a bright model of how affordable housing, education, healthcare, and social capital can interconnect to build vibrant, sustainable communities-affordable housing communities, nearby schools, and the community at large. From there, kids, families, working people, and neighborhoods can thrive.

Two decades punctuated by the financial crisis of the Great Recession and the public health crisis of COVID-19 have powerfully reshaped housing in America. By integrating social, economic, intellectual, and cultural histories, this illuminating work shows how powerful forces have both reflected and catalyzed shifts in the way Americans conceptualize what a house is for, in an era that has laid bare the larger structures and inequities of the economy. Daniel Horowitz casts an expansive net over a wide range of materials and sources. He shows how journalists and anthropologists have explored the impact of global economic forces on housing, while filmmakers have depicted the home as a theater where danger lurks as elites gamble with the fates of the less fortunate. Real estate workshops and popular TV networks like HGTV teach home buyers how to flip-or flop-while online platforms like Airbnb make it possible to play house in someone else's home. And as the COVID pandemic took hold, many who had never imagined living out every moment at home found themselves cocooned there thanks to corporations like Amazon, Zoom, and Netflix.

When the Corporation of Glasgow undertook a massive programme of council house construction to replace the city's notorious slums after the First World War, they wound up reproducing a Victorian class structure. How did this occur? Scheming traces the issue to class-based paternalism that caused the reification of the local class structure in the bricks and mortar of the new council housing estates. Sean Damer provides a sustained critique of the Corporation of Glasgow's council housing policy and argues that it had the unintended consequence of amplifying social segregation and ghettoisation in the city. By combining archival research of city records with oral histories, this book lets the locals have their say about their experience as Glasgow council house tenants for the first time.

Two decades punctuated by the financial crisis of the Great Recession and the public health crisis of COVID-19 have powerfully reshaped housing in America. By integrating social, economic, intellectual, and cultural histories, this illuminating work shows how powerful forces have both reflected and catalyzed shifts in the way Americans conceptualize what a house is for, in an era that has laid bare the larger structures and inequities of the economy. Daniel Horowitz casts an expansive net over a wide range of materials and sources. He shows how journalists and anthropologists have explored the impact of global economic forces on housing, while filmmakers have depicted the home as a theater where danger lurks as elites gamble with the fates of the less fortunate. Real estate workshops and popular TV networks like HGTV teach home buyers how to flip-or flop-while online platforms like Airbnb make it possible to play house in someone else's home. And as the COVID pandemic took hold, many who had never imagined living out every moment at home found themselves cocooned there thanks to corporations like Amazon, Zoom, and Netflix.

Thoughts and feelings about home traditionally provided people of all cultures with a firm sense of where they belonged, and why. But with the world rapidly changing, many of our basic notions are becoming problematic. Both internationally and within countries, populations are constantly on the move, seeking better opportunities and living conditions, or an escape from violence and war. In spite of, or perhaps even because of these trends, ideas about home continue to shape the way people everywhere frame an understanding of their lives. In this Very Short Introduction Michael Allen Fox considers the complex meaning of home and the essential importance of place to human psychology. Drawing on a wide array of international examples he discusses what dwelling is and the variety of dwellings. Fox also looks at the politics of the concept of 'home', homelessness, refugeeism and migration, and the future of home, and argues that home remains a central organizing concept in human life. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

"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.

The UK housing market is in crisis. House-prices are spiralling out of control, rents are rising faster than wages, and there is a serious shortage of new affordable homes. But what caused this crisis and what can we do about it? In this book, established housing policy experts Rowland Atkinson and Keith Jacobs expose the true economic forces behind Britain's housing crisis. Urging readers to see the crisis as a result of the 'property machine'; a financial system made up of banks and investors, developers, landlords, and real estate agencies that prioritises the interests of capital over social need. An unequal system that has been routinely protected by the policy decisions of successive governments. To overcome this troubling system and alleviate the crisis, the authors outline a series of innovative proposals that would improve housing conditions and tackle the inequalities expressed in relation to personal housing wealth. Allowing for the establishment of a fairer, more equal society, and a more stable economic future. ABOUT THE SERIES: The 'What Do We Know and What Should We Do About...?' series offers readers short, up-to-date overviews of key issues often misrepresented, simplified or misunderstood in modern society and the media. Each book is written by a leading social scientist with an established reputation in the relevant subject area. The Series Editor is Professor Chris Grey, Royal Holloway, University of London

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.

A Complex Exile shows that the homelessness sector inadvertently reinforces the social exclusion of people who are homeless. Over 235,000 people couch-surf, stay in emergency shelters, or live on the street in Canada every year. However, the very policies, practices, and funding models that exist to house the homeless, promote social inclusion, and provide mental health care form a homelessness industrial complex. These practices emphasize personal responsibility and individualized responses that ultimately serve to subtly exclude people. This book goes beyond bio-medical and psychological perspectives on homelessness, mental illness, and addiction, to call for a transformation in how we respond to homelessness in Canada.

Homelessness became a conspicuous facet of Russian cityscapes only in the 1990s, when the Soviet criminalization of vagrancy and similar offenses was abolished. In spite of the host of social and economic problems confronting Russia in the demise of Soviet power, the social dislocation endured by increasing numbers of people went largely unrecognized by the state.

Being homeless carries a special burden in Russia, where a permanent address is the precondition for all civil rights and social benefits and where homelessness is often regarded as a result of laziness and drinking, rather than external factors. In Needed by Nobody, the anthropologist Tova Hojdestrand offers a nuanced portrait of homelessness in St. Petersburg. Based on ethnographic work at railway stations, soup kitchens, and other places where the homeless gather, Hojdestrand describes the material and mental world of this marginalized population.

They are, she observes, "not needed" in two senses. The state considers them, in effect, as noncitizens. At the same time they stand outside the traditionally intimate social networks that are the real safety net of life in postsocialist Russia. As a result, they are deprived of the prerequisites for dealing with others in ways that they themselves value as "decent" and "human." Hojdestrand investigates processes of social exclusion as well as the remaining "world of waste": things, tasks, and places that are wanted by nobody else and on which "human leftovers" are forced to survive.

In this bleak context, Hojdestrand takes up the intimate worlds of the homeless their social relationships, dirt and cleanliness, and physical appearance. Her interviews with homeless people show that the indigent have a very good idea of what others think of them and that they are liable to reproduce the stigma that is attached to them even as they attempt to negotiate it. This unique and often moving portrait of life on the margins of society in the new Russia ultimately reveals how human dignity may be retained in the absence of its very preconditions."

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."

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.

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.

Housing is increasingly unaffordable in many parts of the UK, with prices and rents rising much faster than earnings because, over many decades, far too few homes have been built. Since the 2008 financial crisis, the homes shortage has become more acute - sending housing affordability to the top of the political agenda. Combining analysis with reportage, Home Truths draws on extensive interviews with cabinet ministers, civil servants, planning officials, leading property executives and priced-out homebuyers from across the country. Informed by deep economic research and political access at the highest level, the book is a no-holds-barred critique of the UK's chronic housing shortage, concluding with eye-catching policy proposals of direct relevance to both Parliament and regional and national government.