Brian Goldstone — There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America - with Sara Nelson

This event is in partnership with New Endeavors by Women.

The working homeless. In a country where hard work and determination are supposed to lead to success, there is something scandalous about this phrase. But skyrocketing rents, low wages, and a lack of tenant rights have produced a startling phenomenon: People with full-time jobs cannot keep a roof over their head, especially in America's booming cities, where rapid growth is leading to catastrophic displacement. These families are being forced into homelessness not by a failing economy but a thriving one.

In this gripping and deeply reported book, Brian Goldstone plunges readers into the lives of five Atlanta families struggling to remain housed in a gentrifying, increasingly unequal city. Maurice and Natalia make a fresh start in the country's "Black Mecca" after being priced out of DC. Kara dreams of starting her own cleaning business while mopping floors at a public hospital. Britt scores a coveted housing voucher. Michelle is in school to become a social worker. Celeste toils at her warehouse job while undergoing treatment for ovarian cancer. Each of them aspires to provide a decent life for their children--and each of them, one by one, joins the ranks of the nation's working homeless.

Through intimate, novelistic portraits, Goldstone reveals the human cost of this crisis, following parents and their kids as they go to sleep in cars, or in squalid extended-stay hotel rooms, and head out to their jobs and schools the next morning. These are the nation's hidden homeless--omitted from official statistics, and proof that overflowing shelters and street encampments are only the most visible manifestation of a far more pervasive problem.

By turns heartbreaking and urgent, There Is No Place for Us illuminates the true magnitude, causes, and consequences of the new American homelessness--and shows that it won't be solved until housing is treated as a fundamental human right.

Brian Goldstone is a journalist whose longform reporting and essays have appeared in Harper's Magazine, The New Republic, The California Sunday Magazine, and Jacobin, among other publications. He has a PhD in anthropology from Duke University and was a Mellon Research Fellow at Columbia University. In 2021, he was a National Fellow at New America. He lives in Atlanta with his family.

Goldstone will be in conversation with Sara Nelson. Nelson has served as the International President of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO since 2014, representing 55,000 of aviation’s first responders at 20 airlines.  She first became a union member in 1996 when she was hired as a Flight Attendant at United Airlines and today she represents 55,000 of aviation’s first responders at 20 airlines. The New York Times called her "America's most powerful flight attendant" for her role in helping to end the 35-day Government Shutdown and InStyle Magazine placed her on their Top 50 Badass Women list. The New Yorker profiled AFA and Sara's career in May 2022.

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New Endeavors by Women (NEW) is a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to partnering with women experiencing homelessness to build brighter, more sustainable futures. Through tailored support and a comprehensive range of services, NEW works alongside women to break the cycle of homelessness. NEW’s initiatives include secure housing for mothers and their children, life skills development, access to education, and pathways to employment, all aimed at fostering long-term independence and success. Learn more at www.nebw.org.