The Homelessness Industry: A Critique of US Social Policy

Homelessness once was considered an aberration. Today it is a normalized feature of US society. It is also, argue Elizabeth Beck and Pamela Twiss, an industry: the embrace of neoliberal policies and piecemeal efforts to address the problem have ensured a steady production of homeless people, as well as a plethora of disjointed social services that often pathologize individuals instead of housing them. Tracing the transformation of homelessness from being a social-justice issue to one with s...