REBROADCAST: The Housing Hunger Games

Nov 28, 2025

Brian Goldstone, a journalist and author of "There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America," sheds light on the troubling reality of working homelessness. He discusses how full-time jobs often fail to prevent housing instability, leading many to live in cars or motels. Goldstone also shares poignant stories, like that of Celeste, who faced eviction after a house fire. He critiques the bipartisan approach to homelessness, emphasizing that government policies and private equity are exacerbating the crisis. His call to action centers on reimagining housing as a fundamental human right.

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ANECDOTE

Family Loses Home After Fire And Is Evicted

Celeste returned from work to find her rental burned down and lost everything in her car except backpacks and laundry.
After the fire her landlord filed an eviction for nonpayment, blocking her access to apartments and forcing stays in cars and motels.

INSIGHT

Official Definitions Exclude Many In Need

HUD's definition of literal homelessness excludes many families living in motels, while the Department of Education counts them as homeless for school services.
This mismatch locks people like Celeste out of housing help and emergency resources despite clear need.

ANECDOTE

Extended-Stay Motels Become Costly Shelters

Celeste and others end up in extended-stay hotels that act as de-facto shelters but charge far more than market-rate apartments.
These places require no credit check and become a costly trap that deepens precarity for the credit-poor.

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This week on The Intercept Briefing: What does it mean to work full-time in America and still not afford a place to live? We're resharing our conversation with journalist Brian Goldstone, whose new book “There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America,” examines this growing crisis. Goldstone's book — a finalist for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction — reveals how people holding down jobs are increasingly living in their cars, motels, shelters, or on the streets. This episode originally aired August 29, 2025.

Episode Description:

Homeless sweeps have become the go-to, bipartisan performance of “doing something” about the U.S. housing crisis — a spectacle embraced by Democrats and Republicans, city halls, and the White House alike. But sweeps are not a solution. They’re a way to make homelessness less visible while the crisis deepens.

The roots stretch back decades. President Ronald Reagan’s Tax Reform Act of 1986 pulled the federal government out of building and maintaining public housing, paving the way for a fragmented patchwork scheme of vouchers and tax credits. The result is the system we live with today — one that does little to stem the tide.

Last year, more than 700,000 people were officially counted as homeless, the highest number ever recorded. Nearly 150,000 of them were children. And that number leaves out the “hidden homeless”: families doubling up in cramped apartments or bouncing between motels.

“What causes homelessness, in the 1980s as now, is a lack of access to housing that poor and working-class people can afford,” says Brian Goldstone, journalist and author of the new book “There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America.”

This week on The Intercept Briefing, Goldstone tells host Laura Flynn that the housing emergency is no accident; it’s the product of deliberate political choices: “It's an engineered abandonment of not thousands, not hundreds of thousands, but millions of families.”

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