Description
Book SynopsisA compelling look at the historical roots of poverty and homelessness, the worthy and unworthy poor, and the role of charity health care and public policy in the United States. Home to over 730,000 people, with close to four million people living in the metropolitan area, Seattle has the third-highest homeless population in the United States. In 2018, an estimated 8,600 homeless people lived in the city, a figure that does not include the significant number of hidden homeless people doubled up with friends or living in and out of cheap hotels. In Skid Road, Josephine Ensign digs through layers of Seattle historypast its leaders and prominent citizens, respectable or notto reveal the stories of overlooked and long-silenced people who live on the margins of society. The sometimes fragmentary tales of these people, their lives and deaths, are not included in official histories of a place. How, Ensign asks, has a large, socially progressive city like Seattle responded to the health needs
Trade ReviewEnsign's
Skid Road exposes the entrenched roots of our contemporary crisis. She reveals how physical, visible sites of destitution — and the misery they contain — have long been features of Seattle's landscape: shantytowns, the sprawling Hooverville, tent encampments, tiny villages, shelters, doorways, abandoned homes, vehicles, rundown RVs. She then humanizes this topography by adding flesh and bone and heart to some of the homeless people who have experienced it.
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CrosscutEnsign's novel unearths the layers of Seattle history underlying our current housing crisis. Centering long-silenced perspectives of those in the margins of society, the provocative read is informed by Ensign's own lived experience of homelessness and over three decades of her work providing primary health care to unhoused populations.
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Seattle MetTable of ContentsPrologue. One Woman's Seattle
Chapter 1. Brother's Keeper
Chapter 2. Skid Road
Chapter 3. The Sisters
Chapter 4. Ark of Refuge
Chapter 5. Shacktown
Chapter 6. Threshold
Chapter 7. State of Emergency
Epilogue. Hearing Voices
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
