Back to School: Unhoused/Homeless

This is my third back to school list for teens. Previous lists were for history, and for government and citizenship. This list addresses one of the recent social issues to be criminalized.

First, it was migrants.

Now, it’s unhoused/ homeless people.
Ending Crime and Disorder on American Streets: Executive Order 24 July 2025
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/ending-crime-and-disorder-on-americas-streets

Demolishing tent cities while destroying a person’s last vestiges of dignity doesn’t end homelessness. That requires understanding what causes people to be without a house in one of the most affluent countries in the world, and working to alleviate the source. This list is really short because people aren’t writing much nonfiction for teens on this issue. While these books are intended for adults, I do believe they’re suitable and necessary for teen readers. Please, feel free to add recommendations in the comments.

When We Walk By: Forgottn Humanity, Broken Systems, and Role We Can Each Play in Ending Homelessness in America by Kevin F. Adler and Donald W. Burnes. North Atlantic Books/Penguin Random House; 2023.
When We Walk By takes an urgent look at homelessness in America, showing us what we lose—in ourselves and as a society—when we choose to walk past and ignore our neighbors in shelters, insecure housing, or on the streets. And it brilliantly shows what we stand to gain when we embrace our humanity and move toward evidence-based people-first, community-driven solutions, offering social analysis, economic and political histories, and the real stories of unhoused people.

They Just Need to Get a Job 15 Myths on Homelessness by Mary Brosnahan. Beacon Press. 2024
Conservative think tanks like the Manhattan Institute disseminate anti-homeless myths in the media, legislatures, and the larger culture, claiming that our homeless neighbors cause their own predicament and that the best we can do is manage the problem.

Drawing on her deep legal knowledge, policy expertise, and decades of frontline service, Mary Brosnahan cuts through the misinformation to deliver two important messages: that homelessness ultimately stems from a lack of investment in affordable housing; and that the greatest myth of all is that we should have no hope. In fact, the proven solutions are well documented, and the ability to enact them depends on us all.

Brosnahan takes a nationwide look from New York to Detroit, Philly to L.A., and from rural areas such as Cumberland County, Pennsylvania to debunk 15 widespread misconceptions, including:

• that the problem is inevitable (in fact, Housing First approaches have shown great success)
• that “handouts” cause homelessness (in fact, the primary causes are flat wages and high rent)
• that homeless people need to prove that they’re “ready” to receive aid (in fact, enforcing hurdles is far more expensive and less effective than Housing First)

Poverty Scholarship : Poor people-Led Theory, Art, Words & Tears Across Mama Earth by Lisa {Tiney{ Gray-Garcia, Dee Garcia, and the POOR Magazine Family. POOR Press, 2019.
The notion of poverty scholarship was born in the calles, prisons, street corners, community centers, welfare offices, shelters, kitchen tables, assembly lines, tenements, favelas, projects, and ghettos—all the places people don’t look for educators, experts, leaders, researchers, lecturers, linguists, artists, creative thinkers, writers, and media producers. Poverty skolaz are everywhere. Your mama, your cousin, your elders, your corner-store owner, and your neighborhood recycler may be poverty skolaz. With this book, Tiny aka Lisa Gray-Garcia and other poverty skolaz from the grassroots, poor and indigenous people-led movement and very grassroots non-profit organization, POOR Magazine insert Poverty Scholarship into its proper place so that this crucial lived knowledge can be recognized and understood.  points to solutions based on poverty skolaz’ vast experiential knowledge of what works and what can work. This is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand, and end, poverty and all forms of anti-poor people criminalization, violence and exploitation.

Ending Crime and Disorder on American Streets: Executive Order 24 July 2025
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/ending-crime-and-disorder-on-americas-streets

Be well and do good

Filed under: Book List