New book details the lives of Atlanta's working homeless
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Brian Goldstone's book, "There Is No Place For Us: Working and Homeless in America," goes on sale March 25. Portrait credit: Elaine Brown Goldstone. Book credit: Penguin Random House
A new book by an Atlanta journalist details how the metro region's affordable housing shortage is leaving many working people without a place to call home.
Why it matters: Housing costs have soared around Atlanta and the country, and residents with the fewest resources are most at risk of being displaced from their homes.
Driving the news: Brian Goldstone's book, "There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America," goes on sale March 25.
- Goldstone will discuss his book at an event set for 7pm March 26 at Decatur Library.
Zoom in: The book follows five metro Atlanta families who, even though they have jobs, can't afford to provide a roof over their heads in a city where redevelopment is pricing people out of their neighborhoods.
- They had been displaced and trying to make sense of the red tape required to get assistance and were living in filthy extended-stay hotels, their cars or storage units.
What they're saying: Goldstone told Axios his interest in the topic grew after reporting on a story about a family in Atlanta's Peoplestown neighborhood who were forced to move after the landlord unexpectedly decided not to renew their lease.
- "I thought that I had only scratched the surface of this issue, this dramatic rise of the working homeless in America," he said.
- He also said there could be hundreds of thousands of working families around the country who are working and "it's never enough to secure this most basic human need."
- "The existence of this phenomenon both undercut and challenge our dominant myths about homelessness, but also about the nature of hard work and the value of hard work, and ... our assumptions about the American dream," he said.
The big picture: Goldstone told Axios he wanted to the book to be based in Atlanta because the city "has long been a kind of laboratory for America's housing policy."
- It was the first to build public housing during the Great Depression — and was the first to demolish those units.
- He said wealthier residents in places such as Atlanta, Charlotte, Austin and Nashville are moving from the suburbs to the city — at the expense of working-class residents.
- "It's now ground zero for the most rampant gentrification and displacement of historically of Black and working class people from historically Black and working class neighborhoods," he said.
The bottom line: Goldstone told Axios that extended-stay hotels have virtually become "extremely profitable for-profit homeless shelters" that are taking in people who can't keep up with Atlanta's ever-changing housing market.
- They are vulnerable not only because of the lack of rights they have as tenants, but because they are also locked out of assistance earmarked people who are living on the streets.
- "They're really caught in this kind of gray zone," he said.