America Is Pushing Its Workers Into Homelessness

Brian Goldstone wrote an Op-ed in the New York Times about the working homeless in America.

At 10 p.m., a hospital technician pulls into a Walmart parking lot. Her four kids—one still nursing—are packed into the back of her Toyota. She tells them it’s an adventure, but she’s terrified someone will call the police: “Inadequate housing” is enough to lose your children. She stays awake for hours, lavender scrubs folded in the trunk, listening for footsteps, any sign of trouble. Her shift starts soon. She’ll walk into the hospital exhausted, pretending everything is fine.

Across the country, men and women sleep in their vehicles night after night and then head to work the next morning. Others scrape together enough for a week in a motel, knowing one missed paycheck could leave them on the street.

These people are not on the fringes of society. They are the workers America depends on. The very phrase “working homeless” should be a contradiction, an impossibility in a nation that claims hard work leads to stability. And yet, their homelessness is not only pervasive but also persistently overlooked—excluded from official counts, ignored by policymakers, treated as an anomaly rather than a disaster unfolding in plain sight.