San Antonio College Library

The issue of homelessness has commanded increasing public attention in the last decades of the twentieth century. In this scholarly look at homelessness from a world perspective, the plight of homeless men, women, children, and families is viewed from the available research published in books, journals, participatory and advocacy projects, and government reports. Combining ethnographic descriptions of homeless people with analysis of causes and consequences...

When homelessness became increasingly visible in the early 1980s, most Americans were reluctant to admit that the homeless people they encountered were chronically disabled by alcoholism, drug addiction, and mental illness. The media, policymakers, and the American public, persuaded by advocates for the homeless, came to believe that the homeless were simply victims of the hardships of poverty and the lack of affordable housing, both of which were...

Rossi (sociology, U. of Massachusetts, Amherst) provides a comprehensive picture of homelessness in the US today, offers an explanation of its causes, and proposes short- and long-term solutions to the problem. He notes that the homeless of the 1950s and 1960s offer a striking contrast to the contemporary population, which is much younger on average, contains more women, children, and blacks, and receives less income.

Privacy, mobility, dignity, living in a vehicle offers many advantages over life in a shelter or on the street. Here the author broadens our understanding of homelessness by exploring the growing phenomenon of vehicle living and how it differs from other forms of makeshift housing. Incorporating both quantitative data and ethnographic work in California, she takes us into the lives of those who call a car, truck, or RV home. She probes the forces...

In 1967, Elliot Liebow, writing as a participant-observer, published Tally's Corner, a pathbreaking study of black streetcorner life. Coming at a time when Americans were just beginning to understand the moral demand for improvement in the lives of urban blacks, Liebow's book made its readers see for the first time the human reality behind the stereotypes and myths about black life. Now, in Tell Them Who I Am, his first book in over 20 years, Liebow...

This powerful work of gonzo journalism, predating the widespread acknowledgement of the opioid epidemic as such, immerses the reader in the world of homelessness and drug and alcohol abuse in the contemporary United States. For over a decade Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg followed a social network of two dozen heroin injectors and crack smokers in the San Francisco drug scene, accompanying them as they scrambled to generate income through burglary,...

Humans are social animals and, in general, don't thrive in isolated environments. Homeless people, many of whom suffer from serious mental illnesses, often live socially isolated on the streets or in shelters. Homelessness, Housing, and Mental Illness describes a carefully designed large-scale study to assess how well these people do when attempts are made to reduce their social isolation and integrate them into the community. Should homeless mentally...

The authors of the acclaimed no. 1 best seller Half the Sky now issue an urgent call to address the crisis in working-class America, offering solutions to mend a half century of malign neglect. Across the country, communities are struggling to stay afloat as blue-collar jobs disappear and an American dies of a drug overdose every seven minutes. Stagnant wages, weak education, bad decisions and a lack of health care force millions of Americans into...

"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 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...