There Is No Place for Us Quotes

“What we’re seeing today is an emergency born less of poverty than prosperity. Families are not ‘falling’ into homelessness. They’re being pushed.”
― Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

“In the richest country on earth, nobody—whether they work or have a disability or struggle with addiction or mental health challenges—should be deprived of stable shelter. Mass homelessness arose recently within our lifetimes. It’s worth reminding ourselves of this fact, because if it hasn’t always been like this, then a different kind of future is possible.”
― Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

“A conservative estimate of the actual number of people deprived of housing in the United States—those living in vehicles or hotel rooms, or staying temporarily with others, along with people in shelters or on the street—would be well over four million.”
― Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

“Contrary to popular belief, the majority of people on welfare in the 1980s and 1990s were not trapped in an endless “cycle of dependency” but rather used the aid to rebound from temporary misfortune: job loss, a family crisis.”
― Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

“Someday, Carla thought, America would awaken to the immorality of allowing one of the most basic human necessities to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. “In this country,” she said, “it’s simply a fact of life that if you’re a renter, especially a poor renter, you’re always going to be at the mercy of a landlord who may or may not have an interest in keeping you housed. As soon as it becomes more lucrative for them to sell the property, or to raise the rent, or to get wealthier tenants in—if the market allows that, they’re going to follow the market.” Financial support was important. But Carla had grown convinced that what her clients really needed was not assistance per se. It was power. “Most people I work with, they don’t just feel hopeless. They feel powerless. Because they’re constantly subjected to forces beyond their control—even beyond their understanding.”
― Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

“The properties most at risk of converting to market-rate housing were those either owned by for-profit entities (as opposed to nonprofit or “mission-driven” owners) or located in high-desirability areas.”
― Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

“It is widely assumed, for instance, that a family dealing with “episodic” homelessness has stumbled into their predicament for economic reasons (job loss, an eviction), whereas “unsheltered” or “chronically homeless” individuals are believed to be in that position because of mental health issues, a disability, or substance use.”
― Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

“An algorithm could determine the course of action: if the rent was three days late, an eviction notice automatically went out, a late fee was tacked on, and the tenant was saddled with any court costs incurred by a filing.”
― Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

“in Georgia, as in many states, creditors could legally seize a vehicle after just one missed payment.”
― Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

“In Atlanta, no single project has more profoundly reshaped the urban landscape than the BeltLine—arguably the greatest rent-gap generator in the city’s history, and a prime example of planned gentrification.”
― Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

“These investors targeted older residents potentially unaware of what their homes were worth, bombarding them with unsolicited text messages, letters, and phone calls (a practice known as “dialing for dollars”) and trying to convince them to sell—often for a fraction of the house’s actual worth.”
― Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

“Other “hotel kids,” as they were called, were viciously teased. They might as well have been staying at a homeless shelter—the stigma was the same: such kids were perceived as dirty and foul-smelling, while their parents were derided as crackheads, hos, deadbeats.”
― Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

“These groups also bemoaned the fact that consistent rent and utility payments over a period of several years had no positive impact on someone’s credit score, while missing even one rent payment could trigger an eviction filing and cause your score to plummet, often irreparably.”
― Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

“A study from the National Community Reinvestment Coalition found that between 2000 and 2013, D.C. saw a staggering 202 percent increase of white, mostly affluent newcomers, skyrocketing housing costs, and the displacement of more than twenty thousand Black residents.”
― Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

“In many other states, tenants could withhold rent until repairs were made. Not in Georgia.”
― Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

“Georgia, among the most landlord-friendly states in the country, was one of only three that did not require property owners to guarantee the habitability of apartments they rented out.”
― Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

“In reality, families with vouchers were often able to find homes only in poor, underserved neighborhoods where landlords had a clear financial incentive to rent to them.”
― Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

“There was a widely held assumption that “Section 8” tenants were, by virtue of needing the subsidy, less responsible or financially capable than other tenants, and many landlords simply did not want to deal with “those people.”
― Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

“the extra property inspections and administrative hassle that came with the voucher program, and they believed that accepting vouchers would hinder their ability to raise rents at will: if they wanted to charge more, they would need to get approval from the housing authority.”
― Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

“Atlanta’s real estate industry bitterly denounced public housing as a “socialistic” danger to private enterprise—but it was generally considered a godsend for the city.”
― Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

“Like many men and women attempting to rebuild their lives after a period of incarceration, the twenty-three-year-old had confronted a harsh reality upon release: his prospects of securing not only a job but a place to live were exceedingly grim.”
― Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

“She had been evicted, without her knowledge, from a home that had been destroyed and deemed uninhabitable.”
― Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

“Georgia is among the states where tenants do not have to be notified of an eviction in person—wrote at the bottom of the document that it was “served to fire damaged property.”
― Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

“Increasingly in Atlanta, there were two kinds of poor Black neighborhoods: those where property values were rising and investors were buying up land, waiting for the inevitable transformation, and those like the area around Efficiency, where people usually ended up after being pushed out of the gentrifying neighborhoods.”
― Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

“Launched in 1964 as part of the federal War on Poverty, the program offered eligible students free tuition and, crucially for Kara, covered her room and board at its campus in Brunswick, Georgia.”
― Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

“A century of housing discrimination ensured that the path to homeownership remained closed to the majority of Black Americans.”
― Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

“The reach of homelessness is expanding. As it pulls more and more people into its grip, we might wonder: Who gets to feel secure in this country? And who are the casualties of our prosperity?”
― Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

“Someday”
― Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

“In a 2018 survey of extended-stay guests in Gwinnett County”
― Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

“Nationwide”
― Brian Goldstone, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America