As part of MLUC’s Housing Justice project, we are learning as well as acting. To address housing insecurity with depth and clarity, we need to understand the systemic forces at work and listen to the voices of those most affected. The books on this list offer that perspective—combining lived experience, history, data, and vision for change. They are resources to inform our congregation, spark conversation, and inspire action as we work together for housing justice.
BOOKS
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond (2016). This was the ground-breaking study of urban poverty and housing instability in 21st Century America. To research it, Desmond immersed himself in the lives of eight low-income families and their landlords during and after the 2008 financial crisis. Desmond shows how these families’ struggles for stable housing lead to repeated evictions, job loss, and compounded adversity. He also vividly portrays landlords facing the dynamics of profit and survival within a strained rental market. He demonstrates that eviction is a fundamental driver of poverty—not merely a symptom—through personal stories and his sociological research, including statistical analysis, fieldwork, and court records. Considering eviction’s catastrophic consequences on families, especially Black women and children, he closes by calling for reforms like universal housing vouchers, arguing that stable housing is foundational to overcoming poverty.
There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America by Brian Goldstone (2025). Almost a sequel to “Evicted”, this book follows five families in present-day Atlanta. Despite working low-wage jobs, they face persistent homelessness and housing insecurity, and are “statistically invisible” in the official counts and public discourse. Goldstone organizes the book by weaving together the intimate and harrowing stories of his subjects. Through these stories, he exposes how the combination of predatory landlords, gentrification, rarely accessible housing vouchers, underpaid jobs, and impossible-to-navigate social services traps families in a cycle of displacement. Through his research and data analysis, Goldstone shows how deeply dysfunctional systems of housing and social services continually produce new forms of insecurity, even for the employed, while keeping many people’s struggles invisible.
Rough Sleepers by Tracy Kidder (2023). This book describes Dr. Jim O’Connell’s decades-long mission to provide medical care to Boston’s unhoused population, especially those who sleep outdoors. It’s structured around O’Connell’s daily work and the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, blending detailed portraits of individuals experiencing homelessness with reflections on broader systemic causes like trauma, mental illness, poverty, and policy failures. Kidder emphasizes the humanity of rough sleepers, the persistent trauma and societal neglect they endure, and the urgent need for compassionate, long-term solutions. These themes are supported through firsthand observation, personal stories, and medical and social analysis
And Housing For All: The Fight to End Homelessness in America by Maria Foscarinis (2025). In a comprehensive critique of America’s homelessness crisis, this book blends Foscarinis’s decades of legal advocacy with the lived experiences of homeless individuals and families to argue that housing must be recognized as a fundamental human right. Foscarinis discusses the root causes of homelessness—such as policy failures, systemic inequities, and the commodification of housing—while sharing personal stories to underscore the human impact of these issues. She concludes that solving homelessness requires systemic change, including embracing the “Housing First” approach, confronting the legacy of discriminatory policies, and embedding the right to housing in law, asserting that the real barrier is not a lack of solutions but insufficient political will.
Homelessness is a Housing Problem: How Structural Factors Explain U.S. Patterns by Gregg Colburn and Clayton Page Aldern (2022). Exploring why rates of homelessness vary so drastically across U.S. cities and regions, this book uses rigorous data analysis to debunk common assumptions linking homelessness primarily to mental illness, substance abuse, poverty, or local climate. Instead, the authors show that variables like high rents, low vacancy rates, and an inelastic housing supply are the key drivers of high homelessness rates. They also show that cities with similar poverty or unemployment rates can have vastly different homelessness rates if their housing markets differ in cost and availability—thereby putting the spotlight on regional housing market dynamics, restrictive zoning, and supply-demand imbalances as the core culprits. The authors advocate for policy solutions that expand affordable housing, reform zoning regulations, and treat housing as a fundamental right rather than a commodity.
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein. This book argues that the persistent segregation of American cities didn’t happen just because of private decisions or economic forces but stemmed directly from explicit government policies—what Rothstein calls de jure segregation. He shows how federal, state, and local governments deliberately imposed and maintained racial boundaries through racially restrictive zoning, discriminatory public housing and mortgage policies, tax incentives for whites-only developments, and official support for exclusionary practices in both law and real estate. Supporting these arguments with historical evidence, the book demonstrates that these policies entrenched racial separation and inequity nationwide, creating systemic barriers to wealth and opportunity for African Americans. It closes with a call for people to exercise collective responsibility for remediating these harms.
Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It by M Nolan Gray. In this book, Gray argues that that zoning laws in the United States have seriously damaged American cities by making housing more expensive, fueling racial and economic segregation, reducing innovation and economic growth, and encouraging car-dependent sprawl. Gray shows that these restrictions, often justified as necessary for safety or neighborhood quality, are in fact arbitrary and exclusionary. He traces the history of zoning and its impacts, while debunking myths about zoning’s benefits. He concludes that drastic reform—up to and including the abolition of zoning—is essential for building more affordable, equitable, and sustainable cities. He advocates ending single-family zoning, legalizing mixed-use and multifamily developments, and eliminating parking minimums.
They Just Need to Get a Job by Mary Brosnahan debunks 15 widespread myths about homelessness while explaining the historical and economic context of our current crisis. Brosnahan led the Coalition for the Homeless from 1989 until 2019. Her approach combines extensive historical narrative, policy analysis, legal expertise, and her direct service experience to challenge misconceptions spread by conservative think tanks and media. The book shows that mass homelessness stems from an insufficient supply of affordable housing and from structural economic factors, not from the failings of individuals. The real root causes of homelessness are flat wages, rising rents, and the commodification of housing.