Homeless at Harvard


Book Description

Harvard Square is at the center of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is the business district around Harvard University. It’s a place of history, culture, and some of the most momentous events of the nation. But it’s also a gathering place for some of the city’s homeless. What is life like for the homeless in Harvard Square? Do they have anything to tell people about life? And God? That’s what Harvard student John Frame discovered and shares in Homeless at Harvard. While taking his final course at Harvard, John Frame stepped outside the walls of academia and onto the streets, pursuing a different kind of education with his homeless friends. What he found—in the way of community and how people understand themselves---may surprise you. In this unique book, each of these urban pioneers shares his own story, providing insider perspectives of life as homeless people see it. This heartwarming page-turner shows how John learned with, from, and about his homeless friends—who together tell an unforgettable story—helping readers’ better understand problems outside themselves and that they’re more similar to those on the streets than they may have believed.




Breaking Night


Book Description

In the vein of The Glass Castle, Breaking Night is the stunning memoir of a young woman who at age fifteen was living on the streets, and who eventually made it into Harvard. Liz Murray was born to loving but drug-addicted parents in the Bronx. In school she was taunted for her dirty clothing and lice-infested hair, eventually skipping so many classes that she was put into a girls' home. At age fifteen, Liz found herself on the streets. She learned to scrape by, foraging for food and riding subways all night to have a warm place to sleep. When Liz's mother died of AIDS, she decided to take control of her own destiny and go back to high school, often completing her assignments in the hallways and subway stations where she slept. Liz squeezed four years of high school into two, while homeless; won a New York Times scholarship; and made it into the Ivy League. Breaking Night is an unforgettable and beautifully written story of one young woman's indomitable spirit to survive and prevail, against all odds.




From Harvard to Homeless


Book Description

Where would you live if you had no worry in the world? What job opportunities could you pursue if you could move to any city/state in the near future? If you could cut your current rent price in half, where would you spend the extra money? "Vanlife" is defined as a "continuous and everlasting voyage of living in a van" by the Urban Dictionary. From Harvard to Homeless explores: What drives someone to pursue vanlife? Did it come from a position of privilege or need? How people benefit from having vanlife as well as alternative housing options. If so, how could we make such options viable for our community? Why have vanlife, tiny homes, and minimalism become popular in our society? You'll like this book if you're looking for more time, energy, and resources to visit the diverse geographies of the world or you are a young professional struggling to make a start in an increasingly unattainable urban environment Join Franklin on his journey and find out if vanlife is for you!




Shelter


Book Description

A powerful and inspiring study of the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter: The only student-run shelter in the United States.




The Homeless


Book Description

Late in the 1970s, Americans began to notice more people sleeping in public places and wandering the streets. By the late 1980s, the homeless were everywhere--a grim reminder of America's social and economic troubles. Renowned social analyst Jencks discusses the causes and extent of this problem and what can be done about it. Line illustrations and tables.




Homelessness, Housing, and Mental Illness


Book Description

Humans are social animals and, in general, don’t thrive in isolated environments. Homeless people, many of whom suffer from serious mental illnesses, often live socially isolated on the streets or in shelters. Homelessness, Housing, and Mental Illness describes a carefully designed large-scale study to assess how well these people do when attempts are made to reduce their social isolation and integrate them into the community. Should homeless mentally ill people be provided with the type of housing they want or with what clinicians think they need? Is residential staff necessary? Are roommates advantageous? How is community integration affected by substance abuse, psychiatric diagnoses, and cognitive functioning? Homelessness, Housing, and Mental Illness answers these questions and reexamines the assumptions behind housing policies that support the preference of most homeless mentally ill people to live alone in independent apartments. The analysis shows that living alone reduces housing retention as well as cognitive functioning, while group homes improve these critical outcomes. Throughout the book, Russell Schutt explores the meaning and value of community for our most fragile citizens.




Making Room


Book Description

Mentally ill people turned out of institutions, crack-cocaine use on the rise, more poverty, public housing a shambles: as attempts to explain homelessness multiply so do the homeless--and we still don't know why. The first full-scale economic analysis of homelessness, Making Room provides answers quite unlike those offered so far by sociologists and pundits. It is a story about markets, not about the bad habits or pathology of individuals. One perplexing fact is that, though homelessness in the past occurred during economic depressions, the current wave started in the 1980s, a time of relative prosperity. As Brendan O'Flaherty points out, this trend has been accompanied by others just as unexpected: rising rents for poor people and continued housing abandonment. These are among the many disconcerting facts that O'Flaherty collected and analyzed in order to account for the new homelessness. Focused on six cities (New York, Newark, Chicago, Toronto, London, and Hamburg), his studies also document the differing rates of homelessness in North America and Europe, and from one city to the next, as well as interesting changes in the composition of homeless populations. For the first time, too, a scholarly observer makes a useful distinction between the homeless people we encounter on the streets every day and those "officially" counted as homeless. O'Flaherty shows that the conflicting observations begin to make sense when we see the new homelessness as a response to changes in the housing market, linked to a widening gap in the incomes of rich and poor. The resulting shrinkage in the size of the middle class has meant fewer hand-me-downs for the poor and higher rents for the low-quality housing that is available. O'Flaherty's tightly argued theory, along with the wealth of new data he introduces, will put the study of homelessness on an entirely new plane. No future student or policymaker will be able to ignore the economic f




Homelessness Is a Housing Problem


Book Description

Using rich and detailed data, this groundbreaking book explains why homelessness has become a crisis in America and reveals the structural conditions that underlie it. In Homelessness Is a Housing Problem, Gregg Colburn and Clayton Page Aldern seek to explain the substantial regional variation in rates of homelessness in cities across the United States. In a departure from many analytical approaches, Colburn and Aldern shift their focus from the individual experiencing homelessness to the metropolitan area. Using accessible statistical analysis, they test a range of conventional beliefs about what drives the prevalence of homelessness in a given city—including mental illness, drug use, poverty, weather, generosity of public assistance, and low-income mobility—and find that none explain the regional variation observed across the country. Instead, housing market conditions, such as the cost and availability of rental housing, offer a far more convincing account. With rigor and clarity, Homelessness Is a Housing Problem explores U.S. cities' diverse experiences with housing precarity and offers policy solutions for unique regional contexts.




Very Good Lives


Book Description

J.K. Rowling, one of the world's most inspiring writers, shares her wisdom and advice. In 2008, J.K. Rowling delivered a deeply affecting commencement speech at Harvard University. Now published for the first time in book form, VERY GOOD LIVES presents J.K. Rowling's words of wisdom for anyone at a turning point in life. How can we embrace failure? And how can we use our imagination to better both ourselves and others? Drawing from stories of her own post-graduate years, the world famous author addresses some of life's most important questions with acuity and emotional force.




Helping America's Homeless


Book Description

Longtime Urban Institute researcher Martha Burt and her co-authors provide an in-depth analysis of homelessness, exploring issues such as how many homeless people there are in America, where they are, why they became homeless, how long their homelessness lasts, the different ways programs in different communities are helping the homeless, and how policymakers have approached the problem. Finally, they consider what societies may be willing to do reduce the probability that their members will become homeless. c. Book News Inc.