"Homelessness is a perennial topic of concern at libraries. In fact, staff at public libraries interact with almost as many homeless individuals as staff at shelters do. In this book Dowd, executive director of a homeless shelter, spotlights best practices drawn from his own shelter's policies and training materials"-- Provided by publisher.

This volume is collection of essays written by young people who were kicked out of their homes as minors for identifying as lesbian, gay bisexual, transgender (LGBT), as well as a few policy essays from service providers. Diverse contributors ranging in age, experience, and current living situation share stories of perseverance and abuse with poignant accounts of survival. The editors point out that very few urban areas have recognized the need to serve dispossessed LGBT youth by establishing shelters or safe houses; money is tight and public support is often hard muster. They feel that homelessness of these kids is but a symptom of a larger and more pervasive cultural problem: we are a society that does not value all people, and somehow there seems to be a tacit belief that parents of LGBT youth are entitled to abdicate their responsibility to love and protect the children they have created. They feel that such a mindset is due to a homophobic and transphobic culture. This anthology intends to present the points-of-view of the voiceless and also to challenge the stereotypical face of homelessness.

For fans of Girl, Interrupted, Thirteen Reasons Why, and All the Bright Places comes a novel Nicola Yoon, author of Everything, Everything , calls "a haunting, beautiful, and necessary book that will stay with you long after you've read the last page." Charlotte Davis is in pieces. At seventeen she's already lost more than most people do in a lifetime. But she's learned how to forget. The broken glass washes away the sorrow until there is nothing but calm. You don't have to think about your father and the river. Your best friend, who is gone forever. Or your mother, who has nothing left to give you. Every new scar hardens Charlie's heart just a little more, yet it still hurts so much. It hurts enough to not care anymore, which is sometimes what has to happen before you can find your way back from the edge. A deeply moving portrait of a girl in a world that owes her nothing, and has taken so much, and the journey she undergoes to put herself back together. Kathleen Glasgow's debut is heartbreakingly real and unflinchingly honest. It's a story you won't be able to look away from. Includes an Author's Note read by the Author " Equal parts keen-eyed empathy, stark candor, and terrible beauty. This book is why we read stories : to experience what it's like to survive the unsurvivable; to find light in the darkest night."-Jeff Zentner, author of The Serpent King " Raw, visceral, and starkly beautiful , with writing that is at times transcendent in its brilliance. . . . An unforgettable story of trauma and resilience."—Kerry Kletter, author of The First Time She Drowned " A breathtakingly written book about pain and hard-won healing . . . I want every girl to read Girl In Pieces ."-Kara Thomas, author of The Darkest Corners " A Girl, Interrupted for a new generation ....The story of the mad girl is ultimately a story about being a girl in a mad world, how it breaks us into pieces and how we glue ourselves back together."—Melissa Febos, author of Whip Smart and Abandon Me " Dark, frank, and tender, Girl in Pieces keeps the reader electrified for its entire journey. You're so uncertain if Charlie will heal, so fully immerse d in hoping she does."—Michelle Wildgen, author of Bread and Butter and You're Not You " Girl in Pieces has the breath of life; every character in it is fully alive. Charlie Davis' complexities are drawn with great understanding and subtlety. "-Charles Baxter, author of National Book Award finalist The Feast of Love "Charlie Davis has been damaged and abused after several years of living on the streets, but she is fiercely resilient. Though it will appeal to readers of Ellen Foster, Speak , and Girl, Interrupted , Girl in Pieces is an entirely original work, compulsively readable and deeply human. "-Julie Schumacher, author the New York Times bestseller Dear Committee Members From the Compact Disc edition.

Journalist Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary and their four children lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination, teaching them how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary painted and wrote and couldn't stand the responsibility of providing for her family. When the money ran out, the Walls retreated to the dismal West Virginia mining town Rex had tried to escape. As the dysfunction escalated, the children had to fend for themselves, supporting one another as they found the resources and will to leave home. Yet Walls describes her parents with deep affection in this tale of unconditional love in a family that, despite its profound flaws, gave her the fiery determination to carve out a successful life.

"Spacious and affordable homes used to be the hallmark of American prosperity. Today, however, punishing rents and the increasingly prohibitive cost of ownership have turned housing into the foremost symbol of inequality and an economy gone wrong. Nowhere is this more visible than in the San Francisco Bay Area, where fleets of private buses ferry software engineers past the tarp-and-plywood shanties where the homeless make their homes. The adage that California is a glimpse of the nation's future has become a cautionary tale. With propulsive storytelling and ground-level reporting, New York Times journalist Conor Dougherty chronicles America's housing crisis from its West Coast epicenter, peeling back the decades of history and economic forces that brought us here and taking readers inside the activist uprisings that have risen in tandem with housing costs. To tell this new story of housing, Dougherty follows a struggling math teacher who builds a political movement dedicated to ending single-family-house neighborhoods. A teenage girl who leads her apartment complex against their rent-raising landlord. A nun who tries to outmaneuver private equity investors by amassing a multimillion-dollar portfolio of affordable homes. A suburban bereaucrat who roguishly embraces density in response to the threat of climate change. A developer who manufactures housing for the homeless on an assembly line. Sweeping in scope and intimate in detail, Golden Gates captures a vast political realignment during a moment of rapid technological and social change."-- Jacket.

"Today, a minimum-wage earner can afford a one-bedroom apartment in only 28 out of 3,140 counties in America. The single worst place in the United States to look for affordable housing is Osceola County, Florida. Once the main approach to Disney World, where vacationers found lodging on their way to the Magic Kingdom, the fifteen-mile Route 192 corridor in Osceola has become a site of shocking contrasts. At one end, absentee investors snatch up foreclosed properties to turn into extravagant vacation homes for affluent visitors, destroying affordable housing in the process. At the other, underpaid theme park workers, displaced families, and disabled and elderly people subsisting on government checks are technically homeless, living crammed into dilapidated, roach-infested motels or even in tent camps in the woods. Through visceral, frontline reporting from the motels and encampments dotting central Florida, renowned sociologist Andrew Ross exposes the overlooked housing crisis sweeping America's suburbs and rural areas, where residents suffer ongoing trauma, poverty, and nihilism. As millions of renters face down evictions and foreclosures in the midst of the COVID-19 recession, Andrew Ross reveals how ineffective government planning, property market speculation, and poverty wages have combined to create this catastrophe. Immersive and compassionate, Sunbelt Blues finds in Osceola County a bellwether for the future of homelessness in America"-- Provided by publisher.

New York Times Bestseller From Harvard sociologist and MacArthur "Genius" Matthew Desmond, a landmark work of scholarship and reportage that will forever change the way we look at poverty in America In this brilliant, heartbreaking book, Matthew Desmond takes us into the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee to tell the story of eight families on the edge. Arleen is a single mother trying to raise her two sons on the $20 a month she has left after paying for their rundown apartment. Scott is a gentle nurse consumed by a heroin addiction. Lamar, a man with no legs and a neighborhood full of boys to look after, tries to work his way out of debt. Vanetta participates in a botched stickup after her hours are cut. All are spending almost everything they have on rent, and all have fallen behind. The fates of these families are in the hands of two landlords: Sherrena Tarver, a former schoolteacher turned inner-city entrepreneur, and Tobin Charney, who runs one of the worst trailer parks in Milwaukee. They loathe some of their tenants and are fond of others, but as Sherrena puts it, "Love don't pay the bills." She moves to evict Arleen and her boys a few days before Christmas. Even in the most desolate areas of American cities, evictions used to be rare. But today, most poor renting families are spending more than half of their income on housing, and eviction has become ordinary, especially for single mothers. In vivid, intimate prose, Desmond provides a ground-level view of one of the most urgent issues facing America today. As we see families forced into shelters, squalid apartments, or more dangerous neighborhoods, we bear witness to the human cost of America's vast inequality—and to people's determination and intelligence in the face of hardship. Based on years of embedded fieldwork and painstakingly gathered data, this masterful book transforms our understanding of extreme poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving a devastating, uniquely American problem. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible. From the Hardcover edition.

"[The author] takes us into the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee to tell the story of eight families on the edge. Arleen is a single mother trying to raise her two sons on the 20 dollars a month she has left after paying for their rundown apartment. Scott is a gentle nurse consumed by a heroin addiction. Lamar, a man with no legs and a neighborhood full of boys to look after, tries to work his way out of debt. Vanetta participates in a botched stickup after her hours are cut. All are spending almost everything they have on rent, and all have fallen behind. The fates of these families are in the hands of two landlords: Sherrena Tarver, a former schoolteacher turned inner-city entrepreneur, and Tobin Charney, who runs one of the worst trailer parks in Milwaukee. They loathe some of their tenants and are fond of others, but as Sherrena puts it, "Love don't pay the bills." She moves to evict Arleen and her boys a few days before Christmas. Even in the most desolate areas of American cities, evictions used to be rare. But today, most poor renting families are spending more than half of their income on housing, and eviction has become ordinary, especially for single mothers. In vivid, intimate prose, Desmond provides a ground-level view of one of the most urgent issues facing America today. As we see families forced into shelters, squalid apartments, or more dangerous neighborhoods, we bear witness to the human cost of America's vast inequality-- and to people's determination and intelligence in the face of hardship. Based on years of embedded fieldwork and painstakingly gathered data, this masterful book transforms our understanding of extreme poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving a devastating, uniquely American problem. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible"--Amazon.com.

"In 1991, Anita Hill's courageous testimony during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings sparked a national conversation on sexual harassment and women's equality in politics and the workplace. Today, she turns her attention to another potent and enduring symbol of economic success and equality-the home. Hill details how the current housing crisis, resulting in the devastation of so many families, so many communities, and even whole cities, imperils every American's ability to achieve the American Dream. Hill takes us on a journey that begins with her own family story and ends with the subprime mortgage meltdown. Along the way, she invites us into homes across America, rural and urban, and introduces us to some extraordinary African American women. As slavery ended, Mollie Elliott, Hill's ancestor, found herself with an infant son and no husband. Yet, she bravely set course to define for generations to come what it meant to be a free person of color. On the eve of the civil rights and women's rights movements, Lorraine Hansberry's childhood experience of her family's fight against racial restrictions in a Chicago neighborhood ended tragically for the Hansberry family. Yet, that episode shaped Lorraine's hopeful account of early suburban integration in her iconic American drama A Raisin in the Sun. Two decades later, Marla, a divorced mother, endeavors to keep her children safe from a growing gang presence in 1980s Los Angeles. Her story sheds light on the fears and anxiety countless parents faced during an era of growing neighborhood isolation, and that continue today. In the midst of the 2008 recession, hairdresser Anjanette Booker's dogged determination to keep her Baltimore home and her salon reflects a commitment to her own independence and to her community's economic and social viability. Finally, Hill shares her own journey to a place and a state of being at home that brought her from her roots in rural Oklahoma to suburban Boston, Massachusetts, and connects her own search for home with that of women and men set adrift during the foreclosure crisis. The ability to secure a place that provides access to every opportunity our country has to offer is central to the American Dream. To achieve that ideal, Hill argues, we and our leaders must engage in a new conversation about what it takes to be at home in America. Pointing out that the inclusive democracy our Constitution promises is bigger than the current debate about legal rights, she presents concrete proposals that encourage us to reimagine equality. Hill offers a twenty-first-century vision of America-not a vision of migration, but one of roots; not one simply of tolerance, but one of belonging; not just of rights, but also of community-a community of equals"--Provided by publisher.

Two years before the housing market collapsed in 2008, Donald Trump looked forward to a crash: "I sort of hope that happens because then people like me would go in and buy," he said. But our future president wasn't alone. While millions of Americans suffered financial loss, tycoons pounced to heartlessly seize thousands of homes--their profiteering made even easier because, as prize-winning investigative reporter Aaron Glantz reveals in Homewreckers, they often used taxpayer money--and the Obama administration's promise to cover their losses. In Homewreckers, Glantz recounts the transformation of straightforward lending into a morass of slivered and combined mortgage "products" that could be bought and sold, accompanied by a shift in priorities and a loosening of regulations and laws that made it good business to lend money to those who wouldn't be able to repay. Among the men who laughed their way to the bank: Trump cabinet members Steve Mnuchin and Wilbur Ross, Trump pal and confidant Tom Barrack, and billionaire Republican cash cow Steve Schwarzman. Homewreckers also brilliantly weaves together the stories of those most ravaged by the housing crisis. The result is an eye-opening expose of the greed that decimated millions and enriched a gluttonous few.

"Most Americans believe debtors' prisons are a thing of the past. Yet today, people are in jail by the thousands for no other reason than that they are poor. As the Justice Department found when it investigated police practices in Ferguson, Missouri, massive fines and fees are levied for minor crimes such as broken taillights and rolling through stop signs, and when the poor cannot pay, the result is an epidemic of repeated stays in jail. Bail is routinely set without consideration of a defendant's ability to pay, resulting in one kind of justice system for those who can buy their way out and another harshly punitive one for those who can't. In Not a Crime to Be Poor, Georgetown law professor Peter Edelman argues that Ferguson is everywhere in America today. Through money bail systems, fees and fines, drivers license suspensions by the millions, strictly enforced laws against behavior including vagrancy and public urination that largely affect the homeless, and the substitution of prisons and jails for the mental hospitals that have traditionally served the impoverished, one of the richest countries on Earth has effectively criminalized poverty. Edelman, who famously resigned from the administration of Bill Clinton over welfare "reform," connects the dots between disciplinary policies that disproportionately send African American and Latino schoolchildren to court for minor misbehavior, child support policies that send penniless fathers to jail, public housing rules that bar ex-offenders, the eviction of women who call 911 to get protection against domestic violence, and the threat of fraud charges against public benefit recipients to paint a picture of a mean-spirited system that turns daily struggles into inescapable poverty. Tracing this trend back to the so-called tax revolution when voters insisted that politicians cut taxes drastically, forcing cities and states to look to alternative ways of raising money, Edelman shows that we still live in a country where, to our great shame, it is a crime to be poor."--Jacket flap.

"Fifty years after Michael Harrington published his groundbreaking book The Other America, in which he chronicled the lives of people excluded from the Age of Affluence, poverty in America is back with a vengeance. It is made up of both the long-term chronically poor and new working poor-the tens of millions of victims of a broken economy and an ever more dysfunctional political system. In many ways, for the majority of Americans, financial insecurity has become the new norm. The American Way of Poverty shines a light on this travesty. Sasha Abramsky brings the effects of economic inequality out of the shadows and, ultimately, suggests ways for moving toward a fairer and more equitable social contract. Exploring everything from housing policy to wage protections and affordable higher education, Abramsky lays out a panoramic blueprint for a reinvigorated political process that, in turn, will pave the way for a renewed War on Poverty. It is, Harrington believed, a moral outrage that in a country as wealthy as America, so many people could be so poor. Written in the way of the 2008 financial collapse, in an era of grotesque economic extremes, The American Way of Poverty brings that same powerful indignation to the topic"-- Provided by publisher.

Examines the economic underworld of migrant farm workers, the aged, minority groups, and other economically underprivileged groups.

"Widely acclaimed photographer and 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. Like Jacob Riis in the 1890s, Walker Evans in the 1930s, or Michael Harrington in the 1960s, Chris Arnade bares the reality of our current class divide in stark pictures and unforgettable true stories. Arnade's raw, deeply reported accounts cut through today's clickbait media headlines and indict the elitists who misunderstood poverty and addiction in America for decades. After abandoning his Wall Street career, Arnade decided to document poverty and addiction in the Bronx. He began interviewing, photographing, and becoming close friends with homeless addicts, and spent hours in drug dens and McDonald's. Then he started driving across America to see how the rest of the country compared. He found the same types of stories everywhere, across lines of race, ethnicity, religion, and geography. The people he got to know, from Alabama and California to Maine and Nevada, gave Arnade a new respect for the dignity and resilience of what he calls America's Back Row--those who lack the credentials and advantages of the so-called meritocratic upper class. The strivers in the Front Row, with their advanced degrees and upward mobility, see the Back Row's values as worthless. They scorn anyone who stays in a dying town or city as foolish, and mock anyone who clings to religion or tradition as nave. As Takeesha, a woman in the Bronx, told Arnade, she wants to be seen she sees herself: "a prostitute, a mother of six, and a child of God." This book is his attempt to help the rest of us truly see, hear, and respect millions of people who've been left behind"-- Provided by publisher.

"Invisible Child follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani Coates, a child with an imagination as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn homeless shelter. Born at the turn of a new century, Dasani is named for the bottled water that comes to symbolize Brooklyn's gentrification and the shared aspirations of a divided city. As Dasani grows up, moving with her tightknit family from shelter to shelter, her story reaches back to trace the passage of Dasani's ancestors from slavery to the Great Migration north. By the time Dasani comes of age in the twenty-first century, New York City's homeless crisis is exploding amid the growing chasm between rich and poor. In the shadows of this new Gilded Age, Dasani must lead her seven siblings through a thicket of problems: hunger, parental addiction, violence, housing instability, pollution, segregated schools, and the constant monitoring of the child-protection system. When, at age thirteen, Dasani enrolls at a boarding school in Pennsylvania, her loyalties are tested like never before. As she learns to "code-switch" between the culture she left behind and the norms of her new town, Dasani starts to feel like a stranger in both places. Ultimately, she faces an impossible question: What if leaving povertymeans abandoning the family you love?"-- Provided by publisher.