Homelessness and Housing Advocacy: The Role of Red-Tape Warriors [Hardcover]

This book explores the housing process through the in the field perspective of social service workers, documenting in illuminating detail the structural barriers workers encounter, as well as the creative methods they employ to circumvent regulations in order to assertively advocate for and support their clients.

Acknowledgments  Preface  1. Introduction  2. Methods and Context  3. Relationship Building: Gaining Trust and Attaining Useful Information  4. Dealing with Complicated and Restrictive Policies  5. Establishing Professional Legitimacy: Fast-Track Meetings, Workers across Agencies, and Dealing with the Police  6. Fitting Stories  7. Referral Management: Establishing Working Agreements with Landlords  8. Managing Housing with Clients  9. Conclusion

Curtis Smith is faculty in the Sociology Department at Bentley University in Waltham, MA. His research focuses on issues of poverty, social inequality, and social justice with a specific concentration on homelessness and social policy research. His interest in the topic of homelessness emerges from his past work as a case worker for various homeless populations in three different regions of the United States.

Through compelling ethnography, Homelessness and Housing Advocacy: The Role of Red-Tape Warriors reveals the creative and ambitious methods that social service providers use to house their clients despite the conflictual conditions posed by the policies and institutions that govern the housing process.

Combining in-depth interviews, extensive fieldwork, and the authors own professional experience, this book considers the perspective of social service providers who work with people experiencing homelessness and chronicles the steps they take to navigate the housing process. Wl³'