Brian Goldstone and There's No Place For Us

Please note that this event has been moved from the Carter Library to the Decatur Library.

Through the unforgettable stories of five Atlanta families, this landmark work of journalism exposes a new and troubling trend—the dramatic rise of the “working homeless” in cities across America.

A Cappella Books and Georgia Center for the Book welcome author Brian Goldstone to discuss his new book, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America.

Goldstone will appear in conversation with journalist and public policy expert Malaika Jabali.

This event is free and open to the public. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the venue.

About the Book
The working homeless. In a country where hard work and determination are supposed to lead to success, there is something scandalous about this phrase. But skyrocketing rents, low wages, and a lack of tenant rights have produced a startling phenomenon: People with full-time jobs cannot keep a roof over their head, especially in America’s booming cities, where rapid growth is leading to catastrophic displacement. These families are being forced into homelessness not by a failing economy but a thriving one.

In this gripping and deeply reported book, Brian Goldstone plunges readers into the lives of five Atlanta families struggling to remain housed in a gentrifying, increasingly unequal city. Maurice and Natalia make a fresh start in the country’s “Black Mecca” after being priced out of DC. Kara dreams of starting her own cleaning business while mopping floors at a public hospital. Britt scores a coveted housing voucher. Michelle is in school to become a social worker. Celeste toils at her warehouse job while undergoing treatment for ovarian cancer. Each of them aspires to provide a decent life for their children—and each of them, one by one, joins the ranks of the nation’s working homeless.

Through intimate, novelistic portraits, Goldstone reveals the human cost of this crisis, following parents and their kids as they go to sleep in cars, or in squalid extended-stay hotel rooms, and head out to their jobs and schools the next morning. These are the nation’s hidden homeless—omitted from official statistics, and proof that overflowing shelters and street encampments are only the most visible manifestation of a far more pervasive problem.

By turns heartbreaking and urgent, There Is No Place for Us illuminates the true magnitude, causes, and consequences of the new American homelessness—and shows that it won’t be solved until housing is treated as a fundamental human right.

About the Author
Brian Goldstone is a journalist whose longform reporting has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, The New Republic, and The California Sunday Magazine. A recipient of numerous fellowships, he holds a PhD in anthropology from Duke University and resides in Atlanta with his family.

About the Conversation Partner
Malaika Jabali is a journalist whose writing appears in ESSENCE, where she was the Senior News and Politics Editor, The Guardian, where she is a columnist, Teen Vogue, The Nation, The New Republic, and elsewhere. A 2024 New Arizona Fellow at New America, Malaika’s writing on race, class, and politics has led to appearances on broadcasts including MSNBC, PBS, Bloomberg Businessweek, NPR, and BBC Radio. Her debut book, It’s Not You, It’s Capitalism: Why It’s Time to Break Up and How to Move On, was named one of the Best Books of 2023 by The Boston Globe, and her debut political feature, “The Color of Economic Anxiety,” published in Current Affairs Magazine, was awarded the 2019 New York Association of Black Journalists Media Award for Newspaper/Magazine feature. A Columbia Law School graduate, Malaika was an Articles Editor for the Columbia Journal of Race & Law. As a public policy attorney, Malaika wrote legislation and examined policy for the New York City Council for several years. An Atlanta native, Malaika received her B.A. from Emory University and is now based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, working on her second book.