When journalist and anthropologist Brian Goldstone first started working on “There Is No Place for Us,” his Pulitzer Prize-winning book studying families experiencing homelessness, some of the kids involved in his research were very young. By the time he finished the project, he had seen some of the kids graduate high school.
Goldstone’s book follows five Atlanta families and sheds light on the rise of the “working homeless,” or individuals who are employed but unhoused, in cities across the United States.
After Goldstone spoke about his book at a virtual School of Public Health Reads event, The Herald spoke with him about his reporting, research and writing process.
As an anthropologist, Goldstone used ethnographic fieldwork to conduct the book’s research by spending as much time with families as he could to expand “the parameters of what the reporting space is or could be.” He also gave digital recorders and dashcams to families so he could better see what they were going through when he wasn’t able to be physically present.
In capturing these intimate moments, Goldstone hopes readers will see these families “as human beings in all of the fullness of their humanity and all the complexity of their desires and aspirations.”
He explained that these families were driven into homelessness by systems that enforced and benefited from their instability.
“It was just completely gut-wrenching,” Goldstone said. “I was just in a rage most of the time because of what I was witnessing.”
In the book, Goldstone charts the rise of the working homeless to show how the housing crisis occurs alongside gentrification and the “revitalization of urban space,” he said.
The crisis of working homelessness “is really a crisis not of poverty, but of prosperity, and it’s unfolding against the backdrop not of a failing economy, but a booming economy,” he said.
Goldstone said that one of the most important parts of his SPH talk was the idea that “what we see on the street is just the tip of the iceberg,” noting that the homeless count often underrepresents the actual size of the population.
“America starts to look very different when you expand the lens and you see this invisible population,” he said.
Goldstone added that “housing is health care,” and that homelessness can produce lasting and serious health consequences.
In his book, he examines how mental illness and addiction — often viewed as causes of homelessness — can instead develop as consequences of housing insecurity, ultimately altering childrens’ long-term development.
“Homelessness is a choice, not a personal choice. It’s a choice that we, as a society, have made through policies and through our budgets and through our actions or inaction,” Goldstone said. “If this is a choice, that means we can choose differently as a society.”
Ivy Huang is a University News and Science & Research editor from New York City. Concentrating in English, she has a passion for literature and American history. Her favorite authors include Marilynne Robinson, Vladimir Nabokov, and Toni Morrison. Outside of writing, she enjoys playing basketball, watching documentaries, and beating her high score on Subway Surfers.
Miriam Davison is a Senior Staff Writer for University News covering Academics & Advising. She is a sophomore from Los Angeles, CA and plans to study tentatively the realm of International & Public Affairs and English, though her interests span from linguistics to history to music. In her free time, she plays on one of Brown's ultimate frisbee teams and likes writing silly poems.
