Books, when properly executed, pry back the veil and show readers a shared humanity. When We Walk By: Forgotten Humanity, Broken Systems, and the Role We Can Each Play in Ending Homelessness in America is one such book. Chronic homelessness is one of the greatest shames of the United States, a country with so much wealth and resources that still allows upward of six million people to go unhoused every year. Why is this?
The authors make the case that America as a nation, as "the housed," has collectively lost the ability to see the person behind the panhandler, the human behind the held-up sign. They write at the book's opening: "Everyone is someone's somebody." The book does a brilliant job of unpacking several concepts, one of them being "relational poverty." As a man named Adam says to one of the authors, "I never realized I was homeless when I lost my housing, only when I lost my family and friends." This demonstrates why homelessness is so intensely difficult for people to escape: the sheer lack of connections as they turn invisible. The authors also shed light on who "the homeless" are to begin with. They are not just those addicted to drugs or dealing with mental illness, but a cavalcade of people in situations that are dire--and that could happen to nearly anyone. This is the point: seeing them, first and foremost, as people. And this book does so beautifully. --Dominic Charles Howarth, book manager, Book + Bottle