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

by Anna Lou Dehavenon (Editor)

Overview

This collection of essays addresses the lack of shelter—one of the most basic elements of human adaptation—now 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 area—urban, suburban, or rural—and a specific category of homeless people—families 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780897894845
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	11/14/1996
Series:	Contemporary Urban Studies
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

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).

Table of Contents

Preface: Azdak Lives by Kim Hopper
Introduction by Anna Lou Dehavenon
Poverty and Homelessness in Rural Upstate New York by Janet M. Fitchen
The 1990 Decennial Census and Patterns of Homelessness in a Small New England City by Irene Glasser
Doubling Up: A Strategy of Urban Reciprocity to Avoid Homelessness in Detroit by M. Rory Bolger
Doubling Up and New York City's Policies for Sheltering Homeless Families by Anna Lou Dehavenon
A Home By Any Means Necessary: Government Policy and Squatting in Public Housing of a Large Mid-Atlantic City by Andrew H. Maxwell
Huts for the Homeless: A Low Technology Approach for Squatters in Atlanta, Georgia by Amy Phillips and Susan Hamilton
Piety and Poverty: The Religious Response to the Homeless in Albuquerque, New Mexico by Michael Robertson
Suburban Homelessness and Social Space: Strategies of Authority and Local Resistance in Orange County, California by Talmadge Wright and Anita Vermund
"There Goes the Neighborhood": Gentrification, Displacement, and Homelessness in Washington, D.C. by Brett Williams
Conclusion by Anna Lou Dehavenon
Epilogue: A Perilous Bridge by Marvin Harris
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

Using ethnographic data, anthropologists document the homelessness of American adults with and without children in rural, urban, and suburban settings; its experiential and geographic diversity; the causes of the poverty and shortage of low-income housing that underlie homelessness, and public policy measures that have been and that could be taken. They conclude that Americans are failing to deal with the global economy, that the poor adopt creative survival behavior, that the present emergency must be met with public and private efforts, and that shelter should be established as a basic human right. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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