Anyone who cares about living in a shelter, street or doubles with relatives should read Maria Foscarinis' Housing with Everyone: Ending the U.S. Homelessness Fight.

Foscarinis, a long-time policy advocate and founding director of the National Center for Homeless Law, clearly and convincingly illustrates why the U.S. homeless crisis must be addressed meaningfully and why housing must be considered human rights.

In the case of just over 250 pages, endnotes, and everyone's housing Impressive. Foscarinis examines the origins of the crisis, explores how it persists through inadequate responses, and finally explains how we solve it. The details of the whole process are her personal life and legal career, spanning more than 35 years of homelessness advocacy. Importantly, she also combines stories of families and individuals who find themselves unpopular.

We meet someone like Danny, who lost his left foot and right leg toes below the knee after being forced to sleep outside - because his job reserve shelf ends midnight after the shelter curfew, while Dominique and his two-person working mother Dominique, who have both full-time and part-time jobs, still can't afford it. Foscarinis includes stories from rural, urban and suburban areas to misunderstand the misunderstanding of homelessness that mainly affects people with mental illness in big cities.

That wasn't the only myth she demolished. One of the strengths of the book is its ongoing attack on “homelessness is a false narrative driven by personal rather than systematic failure.” With support from nearly 100 pages of endnotes, Foscarinis lists the tough facts: Homelessness is a policy failure, not a personal failure.

This is also bipartisan. Republican President Ronald Reagan notoriously claims homelessness is a “lifestyle choice,” but Foscarinis notes that the next Democratic president, Bill Clinton, is fully committed to creating harmful policies and continuing Reagan’s racist, punitive narrative. "The book argues that both sides have strengthened systemic inequality time and time again through cuts in housing aid, the erosion of social safety nets, and the tendency to see housing as a commodity rather than a public interest.

The Foskanis helped these policy decisions in their historical context. Starting with a new deal, which significantly expanded the white middle class while clearly excluding black Americans, she demonstrated how federal policy consistently punished people for their crimes of poverty. Most of the devastating thing was Reagan's cuts in the 1980s, cutting federal housing funds in half. Despite some reinvestment since then, “Reagan’s cuts have never returned to their original figures, and the affordable housing crisis has deepened.”

Many governments choose not to provide meaningful help Crime the homeless instead. In 2006, she wrote, Las Vegas passed a law (eventually dismissed) “which makes it a crime to provide food to anyone who looks likely to qualify for public aid.” Between 2006 and 2019,” she wrote. National Homeless Law Center Discovered The “laws prohibiting sleeping in vehicles” rose 213%, an increase of 103% on bans on swimming and wandering and a 92% on camping bans. Foscarinis's study found that a 2024 Kentucky law “allows property owners to shoot an uninjured trespasser as part of its illegal camping ban.

Foscarinis works to outline the last chapter of possible solutions, with the chief being the “housing first” model. This approach will prioritize stable housing for the first intervention and then provide support services as needed. Finland using this model is on track to eliminate homelessness in 2027.

Although housing is first and foremost an official U.S. policy, implementation is not limited to underfunded funds, but also due to insufficient supply of affordable housing. Given that “numerous studies have shown that, first of all, housing can not only help people get out of homelessness, stabilize health and improve lives, this is particularly frustrating Save government funds,“Please note. Meanwhile, Los Angeles spent about $30 million in 2019 alone just to sweep homeless camps, an expensive and ineffective tactic.

At the heart of this book’s paper is the assertion that viewing housing as a fundamental human rights is crucial to lasting change. Foscarinis argues that effective interventions can only be implemented on a large scale if the right is legally carried out. This is because, she said, “embedding human rights to housing into a country’s constitution makes it clear and provides a legal basis for rights.”

Ultimately, Foscarinis believes that the biggest barrier to ending homelessness is not the lack of solutions. Lack of political will. While “attack on housing as a fundamental concept for addressing homelessness” gained momentum in the first Trump administration (and likely continues), and everyone's housing Still full of hope. Its story of legal victory against all kinds of difficulties, bipartisan cooperation in landmark legislation, and alternative models such as social housing and community land trusts help map the way forward.

As Foscarinis writes, “Homelessness is indeed a choice. … It’s a choice made by our society.” Now it’s time to choose to be a homeless society.

Ericka Taylor is the co-executive director of U.S. financial reform. Her freelancer appears in Bloom, millions, willow spring and Yes! Magazine.