Benedict Giamo has published widely on the condition of historical and contemporary homelessness in America. In "Homeless Come Home: An Advocate, the Riverbank, and Murder in Topeka, Kansas, " Giamo offers a deeply sympathetic yet critical look at the life of homeless advocate David Owen, who was tortured and killed in 2006 by some of those he intended to help. Part chronicle, part social analysis, part investigative journalism, and part true-crime book, "Homeless Come Home "examines why and how David Owen contributed to his own gruesome death.

David Owen defined his single-minded mission of touch Christian love, which he called "Homeless Come Home," in terms of his belief that all homeless persons could and should be reunited with their families. He demanded that the homeless reenter society via telephone cards, cell phones, and their parents' front doors. Owen, who himself was disabled and had a history of legal and mental problems, would not take no for an answer. Many with whom he came in contact--pastors, social workers, legislators, police--feared that his fanatical dedication and aggressive approach ultimately would be his downfall. After police discovered his corpse on the bank of the Kansas River, four homeless persons who had been living in a nearby tent camp were charged with his kidnapping and felony murder.

Giamo explores Owen's actions and motives, the homeless community in Topeka, the social services available to hem, and the separate trials of the co-defendants charged in his death. In doing so, he conveys the contention between social order and disorder and raises broader concerns regarding inequality, advocacy, and justice. The story is both fascinating and cautionary, a modern tragedy in which no one person can be identified as its cause.

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.

2010 Reprint of 1918 Edition. The Social Gospel movement was a Protestant Christian intellectual movement that was most prominent in the late 19th century and early 20th century. The movement applied Christian ethics to social problems, especially social justice, inequality, liquor, crime, racial tensions, slums, bad hygiene, child labor, weak labor unions, poor schools, and the danger of war. Theologically, the Social Gospel leaders were overwhelmingly post-millennialist in the sense that they believed the Second Coming could not happen until humankind had rid itself of social evils by human effort. Social Gospel leaders were predominantly associated with the Progressive Movement and most were theologically liberal, although they were typically more conservative when it came to their views on social issues. Walter Rauschenbusch was one of the leaders of this important Christian movement.

This is a powerful and inspiring study of the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter: the only student-run shelter in the United States. Every winter night the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter brings together society's most privileged and marginalized groups under one roof: Harvard students and the homeless. What makes the shelter unique is that it is operated entirely by Harvard College students. It is the only student-run homeless shelter in the United States. Shelter demonstrates how the juxtaposition of privilege and poverty inside the Harvard Square Shelter proves transformative for the homeless men and women taking shelter there, the Harvard students volunteering there, and the wider society into which both groups emerge each morning. In so doing, Shelter makes the case for the replication of this student-run model in major cities across the United States. Inspiring and energizing, Shelter offers a unique window into the lives of America's poorest and most privileged citizens as well as a testament to the powerful effects that can result when members of these opposing groups come together.

"How the Other Half Lives" by Jacob Riis sheds fascinating light on how our immigrants in the 1800's lived in New York City. A must-read for Americans whose family has been in the U.S. for only a few generations, this book tells what it was really like in the slums. Whether Irish, Italian, Jewish, Chinese or Polish, German, Russian, hordes of refugees ended up in New York on the promise of a better life. Entrepreneurs lured poor people from Eastern Europe and contracted out their labor in sweat shops in the US. The laborers lived in tenements, which were dark, unventilated cages in blocks of buildings that rented for a surprising high rent to people who died by the thousands in the unsanitary conditions. The conditions described by Jacob Riis in this classic are heart-rending, especially the part about foundling babies (abandoned newborns). A cradle was put outside a Catholic Church and instead of a baby each night, racks of babies appeared. The Church had to establish foundling hospitals run by nuns, who persuaded the unwed or impoverished mothers to nurse the baby they gave up, plus another baby. The child mortality rate, especially in the "back tenements" or buildings built on to the back of others (dark and airless) was incredible. Riis also provides interesting information about the gangs of New York in "How the Other Half Lived."

There is no single definition of the term "runaway youth" or "homeless youth". However, both groups of youth share the risk of not having adequate shelter and other provisions, and may engage in harmful behaviours while away from a permanent home. The precise number of homeless and runaway youth is unknown due to their residential mobility and overlap among the populations. Determining the number of these youth is further complicated by the lack of a standardised methodology for counting the population and inconsistent definitions of what it means to be homeless or a runaway. Estimates of the homeless youth exceed one million. Thus homelessness among adolescents and young adults is a major social concern in the United States. In this book, the authors cite research indicating that youth may be the single age group most at risk of becoming homeless, yet comparatively little research has been done in the past decade on this vulnerable population. After reviewing the characteristics of homeless youth, the authors review recent research findings on the homeless youth population and interventions developed to address their housing and service needs. These include interventions directed at youth themselves (education, employment, social skills training) as well as family-focused strategies. The authors conclude with future directions for both research and practice. This book consists of public documents which have been located, gathered, combined, reformatted, and enhanced with a subject index, selectively edited and bound to provide easy access.

The textile industry was one of the first manufacturing activities to become organized globally, as mechanized production in Europe used cotton from the various colonies. Africa, the least developed of the world's major regions, is now increasingly engaged in the production of this crop for the global market, and debates about the pros and cons of this trend have intensified. Hanging by a Thread: Cotton, Globalization, and Poverty in Africa illuminates the connections between Africa and the global economy. The editors offer a compelling set of linked studies that detail one aspect of the globalization process in Africa, the cotton commodity chain. From global policy debates, to impacts on the natural environment, to the economic and social implications of this process, Hanging by a Thread explores cotton production in the postcolonial period from different disciplinary perspectives and in a range of national contexts. This approach makes the globalization process palpable by detailing how changes at the macroeconomic level play out on the ground in the world's poorest region. Hanging by a Thread offers new insights on the region in a global context and provides a critical perspective on current and future development policy for Africa. Contributors: Thomas J. Bassett, Jim Bingen, Duncan Boughton, Brian M. Dowd, Marnus Gouse, Leslie C. Gray, Dolores Koenig, Scott M. Lacy, William G. Moseley, Colin Poulton, Bhavani Shankar, Corinne Siaens, Colin Thirtle, David Tschirley, and Quentin Wodon.

A poignant and absorbing book of prose and poetry, "He Didn't Die Easy" details both the world's suffering and its eternal promise as observed by a journalist during her career.

The reflections in "He Didn't Die Easy" represent a ten-year journey during which author Mary W. Kimani struggles with the questions arising from the physical and psychological consequences of war as well as the pain, anguish and terror that linger long after. Kimani speaks of how perpetrators of violence and their victims live together under conditions of emotional turmoil, daily anxiety, and utter desperation. Yet, in the face of these seemingly insurmountable obstacles, Kimani's words echo with optimism and the faith that our world will become a better place.

"He Didn't Die Easy" is a personal search for hope and meaning in the face of the haunting and overwhelming realities of pain, poverty, violence, war and genocide that the author has seen, experienced, and written about during the course of her life's work.

This is a book about homeless people. What do you feel when you encounter one? Fear? Pity? Revulsion? Guilt? Indifference? Or, do you not see them at all?

In an effort to make the reader see homeless persons as real people, each one a separate and unique individual, the author has interviewed many of them on the streets and in shelters. Most are still homeless while some have managed to re-enter society. The author wanted to know how they came to be homeless, how they survived on the street and, for those who have overcome it, how they did it.

The next time you see someone sleeping in a doorway or digging half-eaten sandwiches out of a garbage can, this book will hopefully make you want to look at them in a different light.

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 consequence of this was, as in all tyrannies and persecutions it is, the people fled and scatter'd themselves in their neighbours countries, trade languish'd, manufactures went abroad, and never return'd, confusion reign'd and poverty succeeded.

One of the most troubling aspects of the politics of homelessness, Leonard C. Feldman contends, is the reduction of the homeless to what Hannah Arendt calls "the abstract nakedness of humanity" and what Giorgio Agamben terms "bare life." Feldman argues that the politics of alleged compassion and the politics of those interested in ridding public spaces of the homeless are linked fundamentally in their assumption that homeless people are something less than citizens. Feldman's book brings political theories together (including theories of sovereign power, justice, and pluralism) with discussions of real-world struggles and close analyses of legal cases concerning the rights of the homeless.In Feldman's view, the "bare life predicament" is a product not simply of poverty or inequality but of an inability to commit to democratic pluralism. Challenging this reduction of the homeless, Citizens without Shelter examines opportunities for contesting such a fundamental political exclusion, in the service of homeless citizenship and a more robust form of democratic pluralism. Feldman has in mind a truly democratic pluralism that would include a pluralization of the category of "home" to enable multiple forms of dwelling; a recognition of the common dwelling activities of homeless and non-homeless persons; and a resistance to laws that punish or confine the homeless.

The rich continue to get richer - thank goodness. And in the 21st century the homeless do not exist. At least that is what the media leads us to believe. And if they should - they deserve what they get. Very nice - especially if it were true. This book sheds some light on a subject that society hates to hear about, that is 'homelessness'.

National Jewish Book Awards Winner of the Maurice Amado Foundation Award for Sephardic Studies, 2000. In the seventeenth century, Amsterdam took in several thousand New Christians from the Iberian peninsula, descendants of Jews who had been forcibly baptized some two hundred years earlier. Shortly after their initial settlement, the members of this mostly Portuguese refugee community chose to manifest themselves as Jews again. No real obstacles were put in their way. The tolerance extended to them by the Amsterdam authorities was as exemplary as their new-found commitment to Jewish orthodoxy (barring a few famous instances) was strong. These circumstances engendered the new dynamic of a traditional Jewish society creatively engaged with the non-Jewish, secular world in relative harmony. Amsterdam's Portuguese Jewry was in this sense the first modern Jewish community. Through a fresh and rigorous approach to the documents, Daniel Swetschinki's lively and original portrait of this justly famous community presents some unexpected conclusions. As well as characterizing the major dimensions of the New Christian migrations and identifying trends within an array of economic activities, it explores the appeal that Judaism as a religion and as a communal structure exercised. Throughout, the analysis focuses on the common rather than the exceptional and seeks the centre from which the interrelationship of all the constituent parts may be grasped. Swetschinski's emphasis is on the social dimension of Portuguese Jewish economic and religious life, formal and informal. He thereby uncovers the internal dynamics of this remarkable Jewish community that moulded a renegade New Christian population into a model Jewish society, 'model' in the sense that it had the support of proponents of modernity and traditionalism alike and also won the respect of the Christian population. His research adds a broad and authentic vision to the panoply of images of early modern Jewish history and enables him to offer new insights into the troublesome question of the transition from medieval to modern Judaism.

This one stop resource highlights evidence-informed practice and serves as an accessible and invaluable resource for all working with individuals experiencing multiple exclusion homelessness and adult safeguarding. This book brings together the best research evidence, service development knowledge, practice expertise and the voices of people with lived experience to help social workers and practitioners navigate the complex area of safeguarding adults and supporting adults with housing-related needs. It also is useful for managers and leaders in this field. Chapters range from contextualising the current landscape, evaluations of policy and reports to best practice for working with individuals, working together to safeguard individuals at risk to chapters on Leadership and Strategic Partnerships.

One of the most troubling aspects of the politics of homelessness, Leonard C. Feldman contends, is the reduction of the homeless to what Hannah Arendt calls "the abstract nakedness of being human and nothing but human" and what Giorgio Agamben terms "bare life." Feldman argues that the politics of alleged compassion and the politics of those interested in ridding public spaces of the homeless are linked fundamentally in their assumption that homeless people are something less than citizens. Feldman's book brings political theories together with discussions of real-world struggles and close analyses of legal cases. In Feldman's view, the "bare life predicament" is a product not simply of poverty or inequality, but of an inability to commit to democratic pluralism. Challenging this reduction of the homeless, Citizens without Shelter examines opportunities for contesting such a fundamental political exclusion, in the service of homeless citizenship and a more robust form of democratic pluralism Feldman has in mind a truly democratic pluralism that would include a pluralization of the category of "home" to enable multiple forms of dwelling; a recognition of the common dwelling activities of homeless and non-homeless persons; and a resistance to laws that punish or confine the homeless.

In this illuminating examination of our national welfare policy, award-winning veteran reporter and writer LynNell Hancock offers an intimate, heart-wrenching, and beautifully rendered portrait of three women and their families as they struggle to find their way through the new rules and regulations of the public assistance system.

Hands to Work takes us on a journey within the day-to-day struggles of these women, describing their hopes, regrets, and deepest dreams. Hancock demystifies contemporary misconceptions of poverty and illustrates how welfare policy and reform have been conceived, offering a thought-provoking look at the most divisive questions about America's neediest citizens.

When does a person become disqualified for some or all of the rights associated with full citizenship? Who does qualify for rights? When mental health workers took Joyce Brown from her "home" on a New York City sidewalk and hospitalized her against her will, she defended herself by asserting her rights: to live where she wanted, to speak to the press to deride the city's policy, and to refuse unwanted psychiatric treatment. In theory, as a United States citizen, Brown possessed rights protecting her from governmental intrusion into her personal life. In practice, those rights were curtailed at the time of her civil commitment.Using the case of Joyce Brown as an example, Judith Lynn Failer explores the theoretical, legal, and practical justifications for limiting the rights of people who are involuntarily hospitalized. By looking at the reasons why law and theory say that some people diagnosed with mental illnesses no longer qualify for the full complement of constitutional rights, the author pieces together basic assumptions about who does, and who should, qualify for rights. Failer's analysis is motivated by her concern that people facing involuntary hospitalization stand to lose the most effective means they have of protecting themselves from abuse their rights. She concludes that there is insufficient guidance for deciding who qualifies for regular rights and full citizenship. Finally, the author calls for the use of flexible standards to determine who should and who does qualify for rights."

As kinship relationships and support networks across family lines weaken with modernization, economic stressors take a great toll on children. Kenya, like some other nations in Africa and around the globe, has witnessed a rapid rise in street children. The street children in Nairobi come from single parent families which are mostly headed by women. Another group are AIDS orphans. This study documents how street children in Nairobi follow survival strategies including (for boys) collecting garbage, and (for girls), prostitution. Gender is emphasized throughout the book. Although impoverished families are the most likely to produce street children, not all poor families have their children on the streets. The problem of street children is a complex one that calls for a comprehensive and coordinated policy and program for intervention at all levels and in all sectors of society. Alleviating poverty and rebuilding the family institution should be among the first steps in addressing the problem.

In Ted Conover's first book, now back in print, he enters a segment of humanity outside society and reports back on a world few of us would chose to enter but about which we are all curious.

Hoboes fascinated Conover, but he had only encountered them in literature and folksongs. So, he decided to take a year off and ride the rails. Equipped with rummage-store clothing, a bedroll, and a few other belongings, he hops a freight train in St. Louis, becoming a tramp in order to discover their peculiar culture. The men and women he meets along the way are by turns generous and mistrusting, resourceful and desperate, philosophical and profoundly cynical. And the narrative he creates of his travels with them is unforgettable and moving.