There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America by Brian Goldstone

There Is No Place for Us by Brian Goldstone is a searing examination of America’s “working homeless”—families who hold full-time jobs yet cannot afford stable housing in rapidly gentrifying cities.

Focusing on five families in Atlanta, Goldstone captures the human toll of displacement in a booming economy: Maurice and Natalia, priced out of D.C., hope for stability in the “Black Mecca”; Kara scrubs hospital floors while dreaming of her own business; Britt clings to the lifeline of a housing voucher; Michelle studies to become a social worker; and Celeste labors in a warehouse while battling cancer. Each strives to create a better future for their children, but each eventually slips into homelessness—living in cars, shelters, or precarious motels while still reporting to work and school.

Through deeply reported, novelistic portraits, Goldstone reveals that homelessness is not simply about visible encampments but a vast, hidden crisis created by skyrocketing rents, stagnant wages, and inadequate tenant protections. Urgent and devastating, the book argues that only by recognizing housing as a basic human right can this new form of homelessness be addressed.