Mandated by the US federal government, the Coordinated Entry System is a centralized process that provides a primary gateway for individuals and families seeking services for the unhoused. It uses a standardized assessment tool, the Vulnerability Index-Service Prioritization Decision Assistance Tool (VI-SPDAT), to generate a vulnerability score that determines who receives priority for scarce resources.

Goldstone presents this system as a bureaucratic mechanism of exclusion that failed to serve many of the families he profiles. Celeste’s experience at Atlanta’s Gateway Center provides a clear case study. Despite facing cancer and housing instability, her vulnerability score was deemed too low to qualify for assistance. A caseworker explained the core issue: “In order to get housing aid […] you have to be considered literally homeless” (86), a definition that excludes those living in hotels or with friends or family. By design, the system renders families like Celeste’s ineligible and thus invisible, demonstrating how official policy fails to recognize or address the most common forms of being unhoused.

Commonly known as Section 8, the Housing Choice Voucher Program is the US federal government’s primary initiative for assisting low-income families in the private rental market. The program is designed to provide stability by subsidizing rent so that “voucher holders paid no more than 30 percent of their income on rent” (7) and to cover the remainder via federal funds.

However, through Britt’s story, the book illustrates the immense gap between the program’s promise and its practical application. After winning a spot on the waiting list through a lottery system, Britt views the voucher as a life-changing opportunity; when she is forced to find a new apartment, however, she confronts a market where landlords routinely refuse to accept vouchers. This widespread discrimination, combined with the strict deadlines for using the assistance, results in her losing the voucher. Her experience exposes the program’s systemic weaknesses: Chronic underfunding means that most eligible families never receive aid, and the lack of enforcement against landlord discrimination leaves many who do receive a voucher unable to use it.

The Point-in-Time (PIT) Count is the annual census mandated by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to measure the scale of “homelessness” in the nation. This count is the book’s primary example of how official data deliberately obscures the true nature of the housing crisis. The count’s methodology is narrowly defined, tallying only individuals who are “literally homeless” (xxii), meaning those found in shelters or on the streets on a single night in January. This approach excludes the majority of unhoused people, including families living in vehicles, extended-stay hotels, or temporarily living with relatives and friends, rendering such families statistically invisible.

The author argues that this systemic undercount has dire consequences. Media outlets and policymakers rely on these diminished figures, which minimizes the perceived scale of the problem and skews funding and policy responses toward a small, entirely unrepresentative segment of the unhoused population. The book contrasts HUD’s official statistics with more comprehensive data from the Department of Education and new research methods, which suggest that the actual unhoused population is at least six times larger than what the PIT Count reports. The stories of the families in There Is No Place for Us, who spend months in cars and motels without ever being counted, illustrate this statistical erasure in a concrete and personal way.

The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) is the principal federal program for financing the construction and rehabilitation of affordable rental housing in the US. It functions by providing tax credits to private developers who agree to set aside a certain number of units for low-income tenants at restricted rents for a fixed period. Goldstone analyzes the LIHTC program as a flawed, market-based solution whose core weakness is that “the affordability is temporary” (172). Unlike public housing, LIHTC properties are designed to eventually convert to market-rate rents, making them a temporary fix rather than a permanent source of affordable housing stock.

This structural vulnerability is central to the story of the Gladstone Apartments, a LIHTC complex where Britt and her family find a rare affordable home. Because the property is privately owned and located in a rapidly gentrifying area adjacent to the Atlanta BeltLine, it becomes a prime target for redevelopment once its affordability restrictions can be legally removed. The complex’s eventual demolition to make way for the upscale Empire Zephyr development exemplifies how the LIHTC program can facilitate, rather than prevent, the displacement of low-income communities when market pressures intensify.