I went on a ghost tour in Seattle several years ago. We walked down a steep set of stairs and explored the damp underground. Every nook and cranny had a dark story of fire, greed, insanity, and murder most foul. The guide was good enough to make us all jump at shadows.
As our little group walked back into the light I considered how each person’s life could change in an instant. The gift shop was an oddly bright place to sell murder and chaos. The tent city across the street seemed to fit the theme better, so I found myself staring out the window at rows and rows of tents. In my mind, each tent was another dark story.
Over the years, I saw more massive tent cities across the nation. I wondered about the real stories behind all those tents, then I stumbled upon Brian Goldstone’s There is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America in a free book talk webinar through The Aspen Institute. He spoke with passion and conviction, dispelling the myth that homeless people are all mentally unstable or unwilling to work. There’s more to the story.
Turns out, a good number of people are working full time but still can’t afford rent. Some lost their homes due to unexpected fire or natural disaster and weren’t able to find new housing in their budget. Goldstone humanizes the homeless crisis through real stories of people who landed in tents or cars after unexpected events. Each story represents a significant portion of the population.
In many cases, insanity doesn’t lead to homelessness, but homelessness can drive people insane. People are working full-time and striving towards work that pays a living wage, but are caught in a loop of trying to afford the schooling to build new skills while paying for rising childcare costs and trying to find an address to put on forms.
When cities make it illegal to live in your car and homeless shelters run out of beds, you get tents. The real story is that people are just trying to survive in a broken world. Life on the streets is hard, but people don’t want to become just another ghost on a tour of the city. All people should have the opportunity to survive and thrive.
Read this book if you ever walked past a homeless person and wondered about their story, but were too afraid to ask. You’ll never look at a tent the same way again.
