Housing matters for everyone, as it provides shelter, security, privacy, and stability. For survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV), housing takes on an additional meaning; it is the key to establishing a new life, free from abuse. IPV survivors often face such inadequate housing options, however, that they must make excruciating choices between cycling through temporary shelters, becoming homeless, or returning to their abusers. 

 

Home Safe Home offers a multifaceted analysis that accounts for both IPV survivors’ needs and the practical challenges involved in providing them with adequate permanent housing. Incorporating the varied perspectives of the numerous housing providers, activists, policymakers, and researchers who have a stake in these issues, the book also lets IPV survivors have their say, expressing their views on what housing and services can best meet their short and long-term goals. Researchers Hilary Botein and Andrea Hetling not only examine the federal and state policies and funding programs determining housing for IPV survivors, but also provide detailed case studies that put a human face on these policy issues. 

 

As it traces how housing options and support mechanisms for IPV survivors have evolved over time, Home Safe Home also offers innovative suggestions for how policymakers and advocates might work together to better meet the needs of this vulnerable population. 

 

The chronically homeless face a stark reality: lack of access to support systems, adequate shelter, and sustenance, with little hope for something better. For young people, however, life on the street may be merely a temporary stage in their lives. This book tells of homelessness among young people—the causes and their attitudes to the various problems they face.
           
Young homeless people describe a life in which they lose their privacy, the possibility to satisfy their basic needs, and, often, their self-respect in order to survive. The latter half of the book considers what happens when these young people return to society and how they navigate difficulties as they attempt to leave their past behind. Often, the struggle is not solely one of coping with the stigma of their experience; rather, they must face the legacies that linger long after their lives have turned a corner: drug addiction, criminal records, and accumulated debt.
           
Based on interviews with homeless people in Prague, Homelessness as an Alternative Existence of Young People paints an authentic picture of this social group and documents the often unseen social consequences of the transformation to capitalism from communism.

As we live longer and die slower and differently than our ancestors, we have come to rely more and more on end-of-life caregivers. These workers navigate a changing landscape of old age and death that many of us have little preparation to encounter. How We Die Now is an absorbing and sensitive investigation of end-of-life issues from the perspectives of patients, relatives, medical professionals, and support staff.

 

Karla Erickson immersed herself in the daily life of workers and elders in a Midwestern community for over two years to explore important questions around the theme of “how we die now.” She moves readers through and beyond the many fears that attend the social condition of old age and reveals the pleasures of living longer and the costs of slower, sometimes senseless ways of dying.

 

For all of us who are grappling with the “elder boom,” How We Die Now offers new ways of thinking about our longer lives.