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Placeless: Homelessness in the New Gilded Age
In the tradition of Matthew Desmond's Evicted, a longtime housing activist presents a vivid and myth-breaking account of why homelessness endures in contemporary America...
Millions of people are affected by homelessness, but media pundits and politicians see homelessness as a social work problem, or a matter of personal pathology, or some peculiar subspecies of urban poverty.
Informed by the author’s own front-line experiences from more than two decades working as an advocate for homeless people in New York City and his work with housing activists across the country. Homelessness in the New Gilded Age presents an alternative and innovative, wide-angle view of homelessness and displacement in New York and elsewhere.
A tour of the geography of homelessness in New York City, where some 100,000 people a night sleep in the city’s shelter system, Markee visits certain city landmarks where homeless New Yorkers struggle to
armories once built to quarter militias who put down worker uprisings a train tunnel underneath Riverside Parka grim intake center where infants, children, and families were forced to sleep on office floorsa former psychiatric wing of Bellevue Hospital now sheltering hundreds of homeless men each nighta Manhattan park surrounded by luxury condos where the police routinely harassed homeless street-dwellers
Blending historical analysis, urban theory, and the latest policy research, Markee considers homelessness in America as a tragic yet inevitable consequence of economic shifts inaugurated in the Reagan era, worsening inequality and housing affordability, systemic racism, and neoliberal government policies.
At a moment where tabloids and politicians use homelessness as an excuse to whip up fear, Placeless is a powerful and moving account of a social problem whose solution is entirely possible.
Millions of people are affected by homelessness, but media pundits and politicians see homelessness as a social work problem, or a matter of personal pathology, or some peculiar subspecies of urban poverty.
Informed by the author’s own front-line experiences from more than two decades working as an advocate for homeless people in New York City and his work with housing activists across the country. Homelessness in the New Gilded Age presents an alternative and innovative, wide-angle view of homelessness and displacement in New York and elsewhere.
A tour of the geography of homelessness in New York City, where some 100,000 people a night sleep in the city’s shelter system, Markee visits certain city landmarks where homeless New Yorkers struggle to
armories once built to quarter militias who put down worker uprisings a train tunnel underneath Riverside Parka grim intake center where infants, children, and families were forced to sleep on office floorsa former psychiatric wing of Bellevue Hospital now sheltering hundreds of homeless men each nighta Manhattan park surrounded by luxury condos where the police routinely harassed homeless street-dwellers
Blending historical analysis, urban theory, and the latest policy research, Markee considers homelessness in America as a tragic yet inevitable consequence of economic shifts inaugurated in the Reagan era, worsening inequality and housing affordability, systemic racism, and neoliberal government policies.
At a moment where tabloids and politicians use homelessness as an excuse to whip up fear, Placeless is a powerful and moving account of a social problem whose solution is entirely possible.
351 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 2, 2025
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253 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 28, 2025
A remarkable book. In the eight or so years I've been researching homelessness I've always been frustrated with how the American literature I encounter does a dismal job of exploring and discussing the role of the state and of public policy and law. Maybe I haven't read enough of it yet but it's a constant frustration. How can a nation expect to understand its patterns of homelessness without understanding the role of the state? Finally this book attempts to do that in the context of New York, and I think Markee pulls it off fantastically.
The book is very thorough, thoughtful, and caring. I learnt a lot from it, of how the actions in one city have reverberated across a country and the world at large. I was a bit frustrated with the solutions section, however. It felt a little rushed and didn't dream as big as I wanted or hoped. Similar to my criticism of Matthew Desmond's Evicted, I still disagree with the idea of expanding housing vouchers rather than building public housing. Some of the research I'm involved with in NZ speaks to this, of how housing vouchers and public housing (in NZ at least, but also in other places) fundamentally serve different populations with different level of need. Not to mention that housing vouchers subsidise often horrible and exploitative landlords!
Overall this is a book well worth reading, though! I think all New Yorkers should read it to better understand their city and the people who have governed it. It's important to know the impacts of policy choices, and Markee does a fantastic job distilling and summarising decades of policy. I admired his commitment to the cause over the decades, and came away inspired by this long term work and advocacy of his.
The book is very thorough, thoughtful, and caring. I learnt a lot from it, of how the actions in one city have reverberated across a country and the world at large. I was a bit frustrated with the solutions section, however. It felt a little rushed and didn't dream as big as I wanted or hoped. Similar to my criticism of Matthew Desmond's Evicted, I still disagree with the idea of expanding housing vouchers rather than building public housing. Some of the research I'm involved with in NZ speaks to this, of how housing vouchers and public housing (in NZ at least, but also in other places) fundamentally serve different populations with different level of need. Not to mention that housing vouchers subsidise often horrible and exploitative landlords!
Overall this is a book well worth reading, though! I think all New Yorkers should read it to better understand their city and the people who have governed it. It's important to know the impacts of policy choices, and Markee does a fantastic job distilling and summarising decades of policy. I admired his commitment to the cause over the decades, and came away inspired by this long term work and advocacy of his.
December 5, 2025
For The First Time In My Life, I Feel Actively Stupider For Having Read A Book. Yes, y'all, this book is *that* bad. This isn't even "I disagree with this guy's politics and he is hyper preachy throughout the text" level, though there is that too. This is "this dude cites things that have been repeatedly and conclusively not only actively disproven, but actually shown to be the exact opposite of what he claims" level bad. Truly literally everything this guy says promoting rent control? Actual economics conclusively proves that he is not only 100% wrong, but that indeed reality is exactly the opposite of what he claims in this text.
I mean, y'all, I'm absolutely flabbergasted by this book. I *wanted* it to be good. I *wanted* an expose of homelessness in America that I could shout from the rooftops proclaiming its brilliance and showing how far America has fallen - because we admittedly have. And yet while we have fallen, we've also raised the standard of living *even for our homeless* to levels never before seen in the history of humanity - and that is a level of hope that is sorely missing in Markee's text here.
Instead, in this text, everyone who opposes outright pure Marxist economic theory is a racist Nazi monster who can't possibly have a single redeeming quality. And yes, Markee actively and specifically calls someone he disagrees with a Nazi in this text, without providing any actual evidence at all that they had ever supported the actual Nazis. Further, Markee openly admits to stealing from a former employer in Austin, TX in this text *while never thinking he did anything wrong*.
My dear reader of my review, for literally years I have thought that a "gold mine" was my worst possible rating. It means that there is a speck of something redeemable in the text, but you have to shift through literal tons of detritus to find it.
I. Was. Wrong.
I need a new term for my worst possible rating, because this book officially goes well beyond any book that has ever earned my "gold mine" rating. I was not joking in the title here, I actively feel stupider for having read this book.
To the level that I can't even recommend it even if you agree 100% with Markee's politics, which he is extremely preachy on throughout this narrative. Because he is so easily proven wrong on so very many points, he will actively make you a worse debater and *less* actually informed on this topic from being so wrongly misinformed. Indeed, recommending this book in 2025 would be akin to recommending a book about germ theory from say the 13th century in 2025 - it would be so wrong it would actually harm you and potentially cause you to actively harm others due to how misinformed you would be from reading the book.
Not recommended. It should never have been written to begin with. And I truly hate to say that about any book - and never have before this one.
I mean, y'all, I'm absolutely flabbergasted by this book. I *wanted* it to be good. I *wanted* an expose of homelessness in America that I could shout from the rooftops proclaiming its brilliance and showing how far America has fallen - because we admittedly have. And yet while we have fallen, we've also raised the standard of living *even for our homeless* to levels never before seen in the history of humanity - and that is a level of hope that is sorely missing in Markee's text here.
Instead, in this text, everyone who opposes outright pure Marxist economic theory is a racist Nazi monster who can't possibly have a single redeeming quality. And yes, Markee actively and specifically calls someone he disagrees with a Nazi in this text, without providing any actual evidence at all that they had ever supported the actual Nazis. Further, Markee openly admits to stealing from a former employer in Austin, TX in this text *while never thinking he did anything wrong*.
My dear reader of my review, for literally years I have thought that a "gold mine" was my worst possible rating. It means that there is a speck of something redeemable in the text, but you have to shift through literal tons of detritus to find it.
I. Was. Wrong.
I need a new term for my worst possible rating, because this book officially goes well beyond any book that has ever earned my "gold mine" rating. I was not joking in the title here, I actively feel stupider for having read this book.
To the level that I can't even recommend it even if you agree 100% with Markee's politics, which he is extremely preachy on throughout this narrative. Because he is so easily proven wrong on so very many points, he will actively make you a worse debater and *less* actually informed on this topic from being so wrongly misinformed. Indeed, recommending this book in 2025 would be akin to recommending a book about germ theory from say the 13th century in 2025 - it would be so wrong it would actually harm you and potentially cause you to actively harm others due to how misinformed you would be from reading the book.
Not recommended. It should never have been written to begin with. And I truly hate to say that about any book - and never have before this one.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews