Reckoning with Homelessness

This article offers a review of Kim Hopper's 2003 volume Reckoning with Homelessness, which remains as relevant today as it was when it was originally published twenty years ago, particularly given the prominence of homelessness in current political discourse, the move to weaken right to shelter laws in New York City, and the recent publication of a federal strategic plan on homelessness in the United States with a goal of reducing homelessness by 25% by 2025. Hopper's three-part, non-traditional volume is focused on two objectives - to situate homelessness in the American story and to appraise both society's response to it and the anthropological record which has attempted to make that response and the experience of homelessness itself legible. This review offers a brief summary of the volume followed by commentary on its structure and arguments. Particular attention is paid to the effect of the non-traditional structure of the volume. Hopper's arguments are further reviewed with the benefit of hindsight, particularly his treatment of the importance of employment in solutions to homelessness and his treatment of race.