Poverty & Homelessness

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis - that of white working-class Americans....

The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy....

Through the unforgettable stories of five Atlanta families, this landmark work of journalism exposes a new and troubling trend—the dramatic rise of the “working homeless” in cities across America

In Evicted, Princeton sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they each struggle to keep a roof over their heads....

Poverty is much more than simply a lack of material resources, and it takes much more than donations and handouts to solve it....

At 28, Stephanie Land's dreams of attending a university and becoming a writer quickly dissolved when a summer fling turned into an unplanned pregnancy. Before long, she found herself a single mother, scraping by as a housekeeper to make ends meet....

Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II, a leading advocate for the rights of the poor. addresses in White Poverty, a hugely neglected subject that just might provide the key to mitigating racism and bringing together tens of millions of working class and impoverished Americans.

After Jim O’Connell graduated from Harvard Medical School and was nearing the end of his residency at Massachusetts General, the hospital’s chief of medicine made a proposal....

In this breathtaking book by Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human through the dramatic story of families striving toward a better life in Annawadi, a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels....

In her extraordinary best seller, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc immerses listeners in the intricacies of the ghetto, revealing the true sagas lurking behind the headlines of gangsta glamour….

Widely acclaimed writer Chris Arnade shines new light on America's poor, drug-addicted, and forgotten - both urban and rural, blue state and red state - and indicts the elitists who've left them behind....

Andrea Elliott follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani, a girl whose imagination is as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn shelter, weaving the story of her childhood with the history of her ancestors, tracing their passage from slavery to the Great Migration north....

Colburn and Aldern seek to explain the substantial regional variation in rates of homelessness in cities across the United States. In a departure from many analytical approaches, the authors shift their focus from the individual experiencing homelessness to the metropolitan area....

As the middle of five kids growing up in dire poverty, the odds were low on Katriona O'Sullivan making anything of her life. Poor is the extraordinary story - moving, funny, brave, and sometimes startling - of how Katriona turned her life around....

A critically acclaimed #1 New York Times bestseller with more than one million copies in print and a major motion picture! Gritty with pain, betrayal, and brutality, this incredible true story also shines with an unexpected, life-changing love....

The crime-infested intersection of West Fayette and Monroe Streets is well-known - and cautiously avoided - by most of Baltimore. But this notorious corner's 24-hour open-air drug market provides the economic fuel for a dying neighborhood....

Crooked Smile details one man's journey that left him homeless on Skid Row, and what it took to escape a decade of addiction.

When We Walk By takes an urgent look at homelessness in America, showing us what we lose—in ourselves and as a society—when we choose to walk past and ignore our neighbors in shelters, insecure housing, or on the streets....

There are millions of homeless children in America today and in A Place Called Home, award-winning child welfare advocate David Ambroz writes about growing up homeless in New York for eleven years and his subsequent years in foster care....

A single mother of six in Los Angeles courageously struggles to keep her family together and her children in school amidst the devastating housing crisis.

Kevin Fagan’s The Lost and the Found, set in San Francisco—one of the wealthiest cities in America—takes an empathic, character-driven approach to exploring the human side of what’s behind the homelessness epidemic.

Class does make a difference in the lives and futures of American children....

Hailed as "the guide to capitalism", the New York Times best seller Wealth and Poverty is one of the most influential economics books of all time....

Three of the nation’s top scholars ­– known for tackling key mysteries about poverty in America – turn their attention from the country’s poorest people to its poorest places....

How did the "land of the free" become the home of the world's largest prison system? Challenging the belief that America's prison problem originated with the Reagan administration....

Estados Unidos, el país más rico del mundo, tiene más pobreza que cualquier otra democracia avanzada. ¿Por qué esta tierra de abundancia permite que uno de cada ocho de sus niños no tenga cubiertas las necesidades básicas, y que muchos de sus ciudadanos malvivan y mueran en las calles? El aclamado sociólogo Matthew Desmond trata de mostrar cómo los estadounidenses adinerados, consciente o inconscientemente, mantienen pobres a los pobres.

The completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 was a monumental achievement. Linking the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean, it transformed New York City into a hub of international trade, drove the rise of industrial cities in once sparsely populated areas, and accelerated the westward expansion of the United States. Yet few of the laborers who toiled along the canal shared in the prosperity it brought.

In Slow and Sudden Violence, Derek Hyra links police violence to an ongoing cycle of racial and spatial urban redevelopment repression. By delving into the real estate histories of St. Louis and Baltimore, he shows how housing and community development policies advance neighborhood inequality by segregating, gentrifying, and displacing Black communities.

Have you ever wondered, “What is homelessness?” It’s a question that opens the door to understanding compassion, resilience, and the challenges faced by people around the world. The Big Questions: What Is Homelessness? invites young readers aged 5 and upwards to explore this important topic in a way that is thoughtful, engaging, and inspiring. Written by interdisciplinary psychologist Ethan Solace, this book takes children on a journey to learn about homelessness—what it means, why it happens, and how communities can help.

The housing crisis plaguing major urban centres has sent countless people into the streets. In spring 2022, some of them found their way to the yard beside the Anglican church in Toronto’s Kensington Market, where Maggie Helwig is the priest. They pitched tents, formed an encampment, and settled in. Known as an outspoken social justice activist, Helwig has spent the last three years getting to know the residents and fighting tooth and nail to allow them to stay, battling various authorities that want to clear the yard and keep the results of the housing crisis out of sight and out of mind.