Brian Goldstone's There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

Please join Project Home, PRINT: A Bookstore & Mechanics' Hall for a crucial discussion with journalist and author Brian Goldstone for the paperback release of his latest book There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America. Goldstone will be in conversation with Nicole Witherbee, President & CEO of the John T. Gorman Foundation

"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.

Monday, March 23, at 7:00 PM (doors 6:30 PM), $7 for Mechanics' Hall Members, $10 for General Admission.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brian Goldstone is a journalist and author of There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America, a finalist for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and named one of the 10 Best Books of 2025 by The New York Times and The Atlantic. His longform reporting and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, The New Republic, and The California Sunday Magazine, among other publications. He received his PhD in cultural anthropology from Duke University and was a Mellon Research Fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at Columbia University. He lives in Atlanta with his family.

ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER

In 2022, Nicole Witherbee became President & CEO of the John T. Gorman Foundation after serving for 10 years as Chief Program Officer, a role in which she directed its programs, research, and evaluation. She has a Ph.D. in Social Policy from the Heller School of Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University.

Before coming to the Foundation, Nicole held a range of positions dedicated to changing the landscape of policy and practice for people struggling to make ends meet, including the creation of a consulting firm that advised clients on policy matters, analyzing federal budget impacts for the Maine Center for Economic Policy, directing policy for the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless, and acting as the Interim Government Affairs Director for the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition. She spent her earlier years as a community organizer focused on affordable housing. Nicole also taught courses at the University of Southern Maine, Salem State University, and Bates College.

She currently sits on the steering committee of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston’s Maine Working Communities Challenge, and the National Committee for the American Human and Public Services Association. In addition, she is a trustee of the Edward H. Daveis Benevolent Fund.

PARKING & TRANSPORTATION

Mechanics’ Hall is located at 519 Congress Street. Our main entrance is between Loquat Shop and the Art Mart. The Greater Portland Metro’s Congress & Casco Street Stop is directly in front of our building, served by routes 1, 7, 8, and 9B.

Parking is available at the Arts District Garage, with entrances on Casco and Brown Street, at a rate of $5 per hour. Metered street parking is available on Congress, Casco, Cumberland, Free Street, and other nearby streets. Free hourly street parking is available between Parris and Alder Street.

ACCESSIBILITY

To enter our building, patrons will need to navigate a single step or use a modular wheelchair ramp. There is a wheelchair-accessible elevator to the third-floor ballroom.

If you have a particular accessibility question or request please contact us at [email protected].

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