Homeless Lives in American Cities

Homeless Lives in American Cities explores how the American discourse on homelessness arose from Victorian social and political anxieties about the impacts of immigration and urbanization on the middle class family. It demonstrates how contemporary social work and policy emerge from Victorian cultural attitudes.

“Webb offers a new history of homelessness in America. … it is certainly a fascinating account that will be of interest to social scientists and housing researchers with an interest in homelessness far beyond the US context. For non-American audiences, Webb’s contribution raises the question of how similar the trajectory of understandings of homelessness has been in other national contexts.” (Beth Watts, International Journal of Housing Policy, Vol. 16 (2), March, 2016)"Philip Webb's work on homelessness is innovative and original, bringing attention to a subject that was once popular (from roughly the late 1980s the late 1990s) and has now faded into obscurity in important respects. Webb seeks not merely to update the older literature but to critically analyze it in terms of its narrow definitions and foci." - Kathleen Arnold, Professor of Political science, DePaul University, USA

Philip Webb is Executive Director of Making it Possible to End Homelessness, USA.