Summary of When We Walk By by Kevin F. Adler and Donald W. Burnes: Forgotten Humanity, Broken Systems, and the Role We Can Each Play in Ending Homelessness in America

By Justin Reese

DISCLAIMER

 

This book does not in any capacity mean to replace the original book but to serve as a vast summary of the original book.

Summary of When We Walk By by Kevin F. Adler and Donald W. Burnes: Forgotten Humanity, Broken Systems, and the Role We Can Each Play in Ending Homelessness in America

IN THIS SUMMARIZED BOOK, YOU WILL GET:

• Chapter astute outline of the main contents.
• Fast & simple understanding of the content analysis.
• Exceptionally summarized content that you may skip in the original book

 

When We Walk By is a guide to understanding housing instability in America, focusing on supporting unhoused neighbors and reclaiming humanity. The book reveals the loss and gain of ignoring our neighbors in shelters, insecure housing, or on the streets. It argues that our social services systems are failing, and our humanity is also failing. The book explores the reasons why our brains overlook our unhoused neighbors, the social, economic, and political forces that shape myths about housing insecurity, conservative economics' wrongness about housing insecurity, relational poverty, and the unexpected reality of the homeless.

• Language: English
• Publisher: jUSTIN REESE
• Release date: Dec 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223849056

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NOTE TO READERS

This is an unofficial summary & analysis of Kevin F. Adler and Donald W. Burnes’s When We Walk By: Forgotten Humanity, Broken Systems, and the Role We Can Each Play in Ending Homelessness in America designed to enrich your reading experience.

DISCLAIMER

The contents of the summary are not intended to replace the original book. It is meant as a supplement to enhance the reader's understanding. The contents within can neither be stored electronically, transferred, nor kept in a database. Neither part nor full can the document be copied, scanned, faxed, or retained without the approval from the publisher or creator.

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Copyright 2023. All rights reserved.

Preface

Mark, an uncle who was a family-oriented member of the author's extended family, was a man with schizophrenia and lived on the streets for over 30 years. He would often call the author to ask about their lives and request money. One day, Mark passed away during the author's sophomore year of college. The author's father called him crying, and they held a small funeral for Mark in Santa Cruz.

The author attended the University of Cambridge for graduate school and took a six-month leave of absence to be by his mother's side during her battle with breast cancer. After her mother passed away, the author returned to Cambridge to finish his master's degree in sociology and moved back to Livermore, California, to clean and rent out his abandoned childhood home. After eight months, the author went backpacking in Southeast Asia, lived in Oaxaca for a year on a Rotary scholarship, and began turning his dissertation into his first book, published in 2015.

Moving to Silicon Valley to pursue social entrepreneurship, the author cofounded two startups. However, they began to feel a growing tension between their lofty ideals of making the world a better place and their disconnect from the people they wanted to serve. They would sometimes stop and look up at people experiencing homelessness, trying to imagine them as someone's somebody.

Back then, when they saw people experiencing homelessness, they would see them as problems to be solved, not people to be loved. They would feel sad, guilty, and frustrated, questioning how they got like this and why there was seemingly no progress being made.

In November 2013, the author and their father visited Mark's gravesite to learn more about his life, death, and legacy. They reflected on the importance of having a permanent marker for Mark, as it provided a permanent place for him to rest. However, the marker only offered his name, birth and death dates, and a dash in between.

The author realized that they could learn more about their random acquaintances on social media than by sitting at his gravesite. This led them to consider using modern storytelling tools like smartphones, social media, and wearable cameras in more humanizing ways, especially for people living on the margins of their communities.

To create Homeless GoPro, the author collected donated wearable cameras and created a storytelling side project. They invited individuals experiencing homelessness to capture a glimpse of their world for an hour or two by wearing a camera with a chest mount and narrating their experience. The prompt was simple: What do you wish other people knew about you?

Over the next 12 months, 24 courageous homeless autobiographers recorded dozens of hours of footage using the wearable cameras. The author watched the footage and experienced a wide array of emotions from fearful, sad, cautious, to shocked, heartbroken, and connected.

In rediscovering the humanity of our neighbors experiencing homelessness, the author connected more deeply with their own. They noticed two patterns: every child who walked by an individual experiencing homelessness would stop, point, stare, tug, and ask their parents why they were on the streets. Watching video clips of children reacting to the sight of unhoused neighbors made the author wonder if we might have known something intuitively as kids that we seem to have forgotten as adults: people experiencing homelessness are first and foremost people, and it is confusing and wrong that anyone should experience it.

The author, a homeless autobiographer, discovered a connection between homelessness and relationships during a recording session. He discovered that many individuals experiencing homelessness are disconnected from their families and friends, and that this connection is often overlooked. The author decided to explore this connection and found that there is a connection between homelessness and relationships. This book is the result of his decade-long journey exploring these questions and others.

The author has formed many meaningful friendships with his neighbors experiencing homelessness, which have emerged from conversations and thousands of interactions over a decade. Most of these relationships have come through his role as the founder and CEO of Miracle Messages, an award-winning nonprofit organization that helps people experiencing homelessness rebuild their social support systems and financial security. Miracle Messages has reunited over 800 families, trained and matched over 300 individuals, and created