Money Talks: The Working Homeless in America

Slate Money

Slate Podcasts

Investing, Business

4.3 • 988 Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2025

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this Money Talks: Elizabeth Spiers is joined by journalist Brian Goldstone to discuss his book There is No Place for Us on the rising homelessness crisis and how a huge swath of the US population can be working and still lack stable housing. They’ll dive into the misconceptions around who makes up the homeless population, the many ways people like the subjects of Brian’s book were put into precarious situations beyond their control, and what it would take to finally end this expanding crisis. Want to hear that discussion and hear more Slate Money? Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Slate Money show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/moneyplus to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Jessamine Molli and Cheyna Roth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:27.7	forward slash express. Hello and welcome to Money Talks.
0:41.6	I'm your host, Elizabeth Spires, and co-host of Slate Money and a contributing writer for the Times Opinion section.
0:47.6	And today I'm joined by Brian Goldstone, the author of There Is No Place for Us, Working in Homeless in America.
0:53.7	Brian, introduce yourself.
0:55.9	Hello, Elizabeth. I am a journalist and anthropologist. And as you mentioned, I'm the author of
1:03.1	There Is No Place for Us. I spent about over five years reporting this book. And before that,
1:08.8	I was writing various magazine stories on usually
1:13.1	really bleak and depressing subjects around the world. As you do. As one does. As one does.
1:19.5	So this particular bleak and depressing subject is about homelessness in America, but particularly
1:24.9	the homeless who are working and both undercounted and misrepresented.
1:29.6	Yeah, you know, I first came to this subject through my wife, actually. She is a nurse practitioner
1:35.2	and she was working at a community health center here in Atlanta where we live. This is around
1:40.7	2018. And she started noticing this trend among patients she was seeing.
1:47.3	People were telling her that they were working at McDonald's or Walmart or packing boxes for
1:53.2	Amazon or driving for DoorDash or Uber and Lyft.
	...

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