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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Homelessness
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.
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