Recommended Reading

Tent City Urbanism: From Self-Organized Camps to Tiny House Villages (Andrew Heben) explores the intersection of the “tiny house movement” and tent cities organized by the homeless to present an accessible and sustainable housing paradigm that can improve the quality of life for everyone.

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (Matthew Desmond)  Follows eight families in Milwaukee as they each struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Hailed as “wrenching and revelatory” (The Nation), “vivid and unsettling” (New York Review of Books), Evicted transforms our understanding of poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving one of twenty-first-century America’s most devastating problems. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible.

Class: A Memoir (Stephanie Land). Maid, the first book by Land, was a story about a housecleaner, but it was also a story about a woman with a dream. In Class, Land’s second book, she finishes college and pursues her writing career. Facing barriers at every turn including a byzantine loan system, not having enough money for food, navigating the judgments of professors and fellow students who didn’t understand the demands of attending college while under the poverty line—Land finds a way to survive once again, finally graduating in her mid-thirties.