There's No Place Like Home: Anthropological Perspectives on Housing and Homelessness in the United States

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This collection of essays addresses the lack of shelterone of the most basic elements of human adaptationnow experienced by many Americans. Based on the presupposition that shelter is a basic human right in the world's richest, most advanced nation, the authors of these essays look more closely than others have yet done at the causes of the current low-income housing crisis and homelessness. Ten anthropologists and a mental health worker use participant observation and other ethnographic methods to observe and document the experiential and geographic diversity of U.S. homelessness. Each chapter focuses on a specific geographic areaurban, suburban, or ruraland a specific category of homeless peoplefamilies with children, solitary adults, or both. Based on their findings, the authors also present policy recommendations to ameliorate the housing shortage and prevent homelessness at local, state, and federal levels.

Reviews

"Anna Lou Dehavenon is the first anthropologist to achieve a long-term study of the homeless in New York City by both objectively controlled methods and intensive, participant observation, thus making availiable scientifically reliable as well as humanely inspired knowledge of their condition and sufferings, contributing significantly to the successful social and legal struggle to compel the authorities to make some improvements in their situation. It is a fine step forward for social anthropology, urban studies and public policy formation."-Aidan Southall Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, University of Wisc.-Madison
"I am delighted by the publication of this volume of penetrating essays on homelessness, based on research organized by the American Anthropological Association Task Force on Poverty and Homelessness. It demonstrates, with force and clarity, the power and usefulness of anthropology when it engages with problems afflicting contemporary society. There should be much more such work."-Roy A. Rappaport Past President, American Anthropological Association
"Passionate, deeply honest, and heartbreaking. A must read for citizens and policy-makers."-Carol Stack, author, Call to Home Professor of Women's Studies and Education University of California at Berkeley
"The anthropologists' lens employed in these essays throws a new and vivid light on the experience of homelessness in America. It is a problem with which we have grown weary. But these essays recapture our attention and revive our moral conscience by showing how totally homelessness changes and damages the human struggle for a life."-Frances Fox Piven Professor of Political Science and Sociology City College of New York
This outstanding volume, the result of long-term work by dedicated anthropologists, documents in horrifying detail both urban and rural homelessness in the United States since 1980....The book is a wake-up call--may it be heeded.-The Antioch Review
"This outstanding volume, the result of long-term work by dedicated anthropologists, documents in horrifying detail both urban and rural homelessness in the United States since 1980....The book is a wake-up call--may it be heeded."-The Antioch Review

Author Bio

ANNA LOU DEHAVENON is Founder and Director of the Action Research Project on Hunger, Homelessness, and Family Health. She is Adjunct Assistant Professor of Anthropology in Community Medicine at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine (CUNY).