Showing titles in Poverty & Homelessness

At age 14, I ran away, but not from home - because I never had one to begin with. At school I participated in every sport, club, and after-school activity, so that when the other kids finally left, I could settle in for the night by my locker. I spent my childhood dealing with gangs, drugs, violence, and my mother's mental illness, but the real enemy was always poverty.

Glen Dunzweiler is a filmmaker, producer, writer, and public speaker. He started his work with homelessness in 2010 when making his documentary yHomeless? After years of seeing the public bang their heads up against the same homeless issues, he was driven to write this primer. Things I’ve Learned from the Homeless looks to explain the world housed individuals are often frustrated by. The goal is to flip viewpoints on homelessness, to create new dialogues, and to inspire action. Glen Dunzweiler invites you to get into it with him, so we can all start to figure this out.

Kerry Hudson is proudly working class but she was never proudly poor. The poverty she grew up in was all-encompassing, grinding and often dehumanising. Always on the move with her single mother, Kerry attended nine primary schools and five secondaries, living in B&Bs and council flats. She scores eight out of ten on the Adverse Childhood Experiences measure of childhood trauma. Twenty years later, Kerry’s life is unrecognisable. She’s a prize-winning novelist who has travelled the world. She has a secure home, a loving partner and access to art, music, film and books..

Born into poverty in a crime-ridden town and unaware of his Ojibwe heritage, John Eric Aslin’s earliest memories are of a harrowing childhood rife with abuse. This troubling upbringing led him to an adolescence full of crime, when at 21 he was sentenced to life in prison for an accidental death. Thirty-six years later, he’s still behind bars, and almost a senior citizen. This heartbreaking account explores the life of John Aslin, painting a poignant and eye-opening picture of the struggles he faced during his upbringing, and the unfortunate hardships that led him to crime.

In some of the bleakest corners of the world, an unprecedented movement is taking root. From the favelas of Brazil to the Maori villages in New Zealand, from occupied Palestine to South Central Los Angeles, musicians with strong social consciences are founding intensive orchestra programs for children in need. In this captivating and inspiring account, authors Tricia Tunstall and Eric Booth tell the remarkable story of the international El Sistema movement.

From the bottom to the top of our economy, capitalism is too blunt an instrument to tackle Britain's epidemic of inequality. Soaring rents, unfair taxation and a growing gig economy have brought about unprecedented economic shame: Amazon warehouse workers living in tents, nurses turning to foodbanks, London firemen commuting hundreds of miles to work. Even those higher up the ladder are losing their grip on the life they were promised.

What does it mean to be poor in the UK and America? For decades the primary narrative about poverty in both countries is that it has been caused by personal flaws or "bad life decisions" rather than policy choices or economic inequality. This misleading account has become deeply embedded in the public consciousness with serious ramifications for how financially vulnerable people are seen, spoken about, and treated.

True prosperity - thriving economically - is possible for all humanity, but common myths prevent us from achieving it. The primary barrier to prosperity is not in language, culture, religion, race, natural resources, or geography. The far greater obstacle is the systemic and individual corruption on the part of leaders who are free to steal without punishment.

In Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope, Pulitzer Prize winning journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn take a personal and harrowing look at the pervasive problems of poverty, drug abuse, and rising death rate in America through the stories of the people in America's forgotten towns. What they discover is a problem that goes far beyond unemployment or personal choice: they discover America's great social depression.

Poverty costs our country more than a trillion dollars a year for myriad complex reasons. Ending it would result in joy that is hard to quantify. Yet for all the complexities involved, the “how” of it all–the way to escape national suffering and decline and start off toward a future of organic, resilient national growth–is simple.

We typically view poverty as a technical problem that we can solve with more money, more technology, and more volunteers. But there is an adaptive side to the problem of poverty, as well. Reframing Poverty directs our attention to the emotional and often unconscious mindsets we bring to this issue.

Do you want to know what its like to be homeless in America? "Homeless: A Day In The Life" is a harrowing tale of what one homeless veteran goes through in a single day. It's an engrossing account of his begging, searching through the garbage for his food and anything he can sell, confronting the police, trying to get into a shelter, and staying away from the "bum bashing" violent gangs. He drinks secondhand coffee, smokes cigarette butts, begs with a cardboard sign, and sleeps out in the open. You've seen him a thousand times, on street corners, sidewalks and stoplights, asking you to help...

Homelessness is a complex and growing problem in America. It cannot be “solved,” but it can be managed, and some approaches work better than others. At a time when cities its size have thousands of unsheltered homeless on their streets at night, Colorado Springs has less than 400. Meeting Homelessness with Hope explores why this is so.

A collection of short stories about turning setback into comebacks. Author Troy Harris II was only sure of two things: he was uncomfortable, and in what seemed like a truly foreign land. As it turns out, he was just home less in Dallas....

In Poor, Caleb Femi explores the trials, tribulations, dreams and joys of young Black boys in 21st-century Peckham. He contemplates the ways in which they are informed by the built environment of concrete walls and gentrifying neighbourhoods that form their stage, writes a coded, near-mythical history of the personalities and sagas of his South London youth and pays tribute to the rappers and artists who spoke to their lives.

Jay Levy's Pretreatment In Action: Interactive Exploration from Homelessness to Housing Stabilization provides the reader with a wonderfully crafted, detailed step-by-step manual with real-world scenarios on how Pretreatment and the Stages of Engagement play out in the actual work. The vignettes are rich with descriptions that clearly come from a deep repertoire of experience working in the field that gives the reader confidence they are being guided by someone who has been in their shoes. The thoughtful questions and space to reflect add a helpful workbook touch to the feel of the text, ...

Kevin Fagan’s The Lost and the Found, set in San Francisco—one of the wealthiest cities in America—takes an empathic, character-driven approach to exploring the human side of what’s behind the homelessness epidemic. An award-winning journalist and Pulitzer Prize nominee who has covered homelessness for decades and spent extensive time on the streets for his reporting, Fagan experienced it himself as a young man and brings a deep understanding to the crisis.

Have you ever wondered how much that guy with the cardboard sign makes? One economics student did and he decided to find out. During the summer of his senior year at college, while earning a B.A. in Economics and Political Science, David P. Spears spent 80 hours undercover as a panhandler. Systematically recording every transaction at the exit ramp, Spears captured a rarely seen picture of how modern urban charity works.

In this fierce and moving account, journalist Vicky Spratt traces decades of bad policy decisions to show how and why the British dream of homeownership has withered and the safety net of social housing has broken. Through the lives of those in the renting trap, she illuminates the ways this crisis is devastating our health, communities and political landscape. But, as the COVID epidemic showed, there are also real, radical steps we can take to give everyone the chance of a good home.

How do people become homeless? At age sixteen, Zac Levy set out to answer this question. Follow Levy’s year-long journey as he bounces between homeless shelters and soup kitchens exploring the struggles of the homeless and finding ways to assist the less fortunate.