Struggling in the Land of Plenty

Sociologist Roschelle (SUNY, New Paltz) here examines the rise of familial homelessness in San Francisco during the 1990s. While this case study of the causes and consequences of homelessness focuses on one location, its social policy lessons can be applied nationwide. By illuminating the intersections of race, gender, and class, Roschelle unpacks economic restructuring and urban renewal efforts since the 1960s, in addition to 1990s welfare and public housing reform programs that deeply impacted employment and housing opportunities for low-income families. At the family level, she shows the devastation that domestic violence and childhood sexual abuse play in contributing to ever-increasing rates of homelessness among poor women of color. Her ethnographic portrayals of families also give readers a ground-level view outlining the violence (physical and emotional), stressors, and continued erosion of extended kinship networks associated with the effort to find and maintain safe and affordable housing. The consequences of familial homelessness feed into a cycle of cumulative disadvantage and erect barricades to stable housing. Through her detailed descriptions, the author provides powerful insight into the link between experiences of homelessness and broader structural factors that shape the lives of families.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels.

* CHOICE *
Poignant and provocative. . . . Roschelle’s detailed analysis gives voice to otherwise hidden elements of the homeless experience, elements that reveal its complexity and help us to understand its sometimes chronic nature. As we listen to homeless mothers convey the rationality of their seemingly irrational choices, we come to understand the difficult decisions they sometimes must make for the sake of their families. . . . This book would fit nicely in course on social stratification or gender as it vividly portrays both the structural and interpersonal disempowerment that can render women homeless. At the same time, the accounts presented here remind us that the hopes and dreams of homeless families are not all that dissimilar from our own. * Gender & Society *

In Struggling in the Land of Plenty, Roschelle effectively situates individual experiences of poverty among families affected by homelessness within larger systems. These include social, political, and historical structures and American ideals like work and self-sufficiency. While it is well known that homelessness has plagued the United States since the 1980s, Roschelle’s book provides an insightful narrative that helps us to better understand what was happening in 1990s in San Francisco and other urban centers across America. . . . we need more researchers shining a spotlight on the ways systems oppress and how this is felt in individuals’ daily lives.

* Affilia: Journal of Women And Social Work *
Anne R. Roschelle eloquently explicates how gentrification has exacerbated a nation already hyper-segregated by race, class, and gender, and the problems that so many single mothers must navigate in order to secure even the most modest forms of urban shelter. San Francisco, the site of this ethnography, is the leading face of the homelessness epidemic, along with virtually every city from San Jose to the Wine Country, and Roschelle ventures deep into the spaces where the homeless dwell. Roschelle undergirds all that she reveals with solid sociological theory and practice, and she shows great sensitivity as a researcher to her chronically subjugated research sample. To all of my academic colleagues, neighbors, and other associates, this book will certainly help answer what you frequently ask me, a Northern California native: What has happened to the diverse "funkytown" we once knew? -- Katrina Bell McDonald, Johns Hopkins University
As gentrification becomes a growing concern in cities across the country Struggling in the Land of Plenty is a must-read! Capturing the economic, political, and social conditions resulting in an unprecedented rise in homeless that includes families, Roschelle offers an alarming analysis of the consequences of welfare reform, violence experienced by women and children, the disappearing social support and extended kinship networks previously relied on during a time of crisis. The violence perpetuated in our failure to address urban poverty becomes even more evident in the stories of homeless kids. -- Mary Romero, Arizona State University, author of The Maid’s Daughter: Living Inside and Outside the American D