A Q&A with Brian Goldstone
Brian Goldstone answers our questions about his latest book and shares some of his other recommended reads.
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 by 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. 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.
Brian recently took the time to answer our questions about the book and recommend some of his other favorite reads. You can preorder a copy of There Is No Place for Us now.
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Porchlight Book Company: Writing a book is no small undertaking. What compelled you to write this one?
Brian Goldstone: In 2018, my wife, a nurse practitioner at a community health center, started noticing something alarming: more and more of her patients—people working at Walmart, McDonald’s, or driving for Uber and Lyft—had nowhere to live. They were sleeping in their cars, on friends’ couches, or in shelters. I was stunned. How could these two words, working and homeless, go together?
I started reporting, and my first deep dive was a magazine story about a home health aide and her children pushed into homelessness in Atlanta, a city where rents were skyrocketing while wages stagnated. But when the article was done, I felt like I had only scratched the surface. Was this an anomaly, or were there others like them? And if so, what was driving so many working families into homelessness?
As I kept reporting across the country, I saw the same thing everywhere: men, women, and children sleeping in parking lots, in tents, in their cars, showering at gyms before heading to their shifts. I began to understand that this wasn’t just a crisis, but a profound shift—a world where a paycheck no longer guaranteed a roof overhead. This book follows five families as they navigate that reality, fighting against impossible odds for something as basic as a place to live.
PBC: Writing (and reading) always prompts as many new questions as it offers answers to the ones you came to it with. What is one unanswered question you encountered as you wrote the book that you are most interested in answering now?
BG: One question that lingers for me is: What would it actually take to end homelessness in America? Not just manage or mitigate it, but truly end it. Reporting this book made it clear that homelessness isn’t an individual failing—it’s the predictable outcome of decades of policy that have made housing unaffordable, wages inadequate, and tenant protections, in many cities, nearly nonexistent. But if these conditions were created by policy choices, they can be undone by different choices. What would those choices look like? And what kinds of political pressure would be needed to make them a reality? These are the questions I keep coming back to.
PBC: If there is only one thing a reader takes away from reading this book, what would you hope it to be?
BG: I want readers to walk away shocked by the reality that even people working multiple jobs are unable to secure something as fundamental as a place to live—for themselves, for their children. How have we allowed safe, stable housing, a basic human need, to be treated as a luxury—its price dictated by the laws of supply and demand and the whims of the market? We recognize certain things—education, clean water, public parks—as essential public goods, vital to the well-being of society and funded accordingly. Why isn’t housing on that list?
If there’s one point I hope this book makes clear, it’s that when people’s homes are treated as commodities to be exploited for maximum profit, the result isn’t just rising rents—it’s widespread suffering and insecurity.
PBC: One of the great things about books is that they tend to lead readers to other books. What book[s] related to this topic would you recommend people read after (or perhaps even before) reading your book?
BG: There are so many essential books on housing, homelessness, and displacement that I’d recommend. Invisible Child by Andrea Elliott is a masterful, deeply reported account of one family’s struggle with homelessness in New York City. Capital City by Samuel Stein explores the role of real estate in shaping urban inequality. Abolish Rent by Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis is an incisive, urgent argument for tenant organizing. Race for Profit by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is essential reading on how housing policies have long functioned as a tool of racial capitalism, reinforcing segregation and exploitation. And Evicted by Matthew Desmond is indispensable for understanding how housing insecurity has become a defining feature of American poverty.
PBC: What is your personal favorite book?
BG: I’m terrible at picking a single favorite book, so I’ll name my favorite on this particular subject: Jonathan Kozol’s Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America. First published more than 35 years ago, it remains one of the most powerful, humane, and urgent accounts of homelessness in the U.S. A searing depiction of life in a towering New York City shelter for families, the book exposes the systemic forces that push people into homelessness.
Kozol distilled this reality into a single italicized sentence: “The cause of homelessness is lack of housing.” That simple, undeniable truth—written at a time when neoliberalism was ascendant and affordable housing was vanishing from American cities—feels just as relevant today, if not more so.
PBC: What are you reading now?
BG: I’m always reading at least two books at once—one fiction, one nonfiction—and right now, I’m devouring Original Sins by Eve L. Ewing and Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar. Both are electrifying in completely different ways.
PBC: Do you have any future projects in the works that we can look forward to?
BG: My brain seems incapable of imagining another project at this point! Right now, I’m single-mindedly focused on getting the message of There Is No Place for Us out into the world. This book exposes a crisis that impacts millions of Americans yet remains largely invisible, and my goal is to push the conversation forward in every way I can.
About the Author
Brian Goldstone is a journalist whose longform reporting and essays have appeared in The New York Times, 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.
