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 solutions based on medical models and zero-sum-games analyses, Beck and Twiss explore how government policies and practices have served to shape our limited response to the problem. Equally important, they consider how a more just, human-rights-based approach might be effected.

Elizabeth Beck is professor in the School of Social Work at Georgia State University. Pamela C. Twiss is professor of social work at the California University of Pennsylvania.