Skid Road
On the Frontier of Health and Homelessness in an American City

A scattered history of homelessness in Seattle, focused on a few representative biographies, that hopes to garner empathy through this connection to the individual. Yet it concludes that individuals are largely unable to change the institutional structures that keep people in poverty. There's a discon......more

A quick history of homelessness in Seattle. Well-written, with plenty of focus on real people throughout the ages. I wanted something a bit more technical and policy-oriented—she briefly mentions the homelessness industrial complex, but doesn’t really get into how Seattle has kinda abdicated its res......more

Ensign’s book, as she acknowledges, builds on a much earlier book of the same name, Murray Morgan’s 1951 SKID ROAD in which he stated that he wanted to write a history of “Seattle from the bottom up.” He wanted to concentrate, not exclusively on civic leaders, but ordinary people who helped make Sea......more

Discovering Seattle's Mishandling of the Disadvantaged through Josephine Ensign's Skid Road—On the Frontier of Health and Homelessness in an American City by Ariel Basom I have lived in Seattle for all my life, which is to say, I have spent years wandering the streets of the University District and Ca......more

One of the most prosperous American cities, Seattle also has the highest per capita rate of urban homelessness in the nation. “Skid Road” takes a deep historical dive into this persistent problem. The author characterizes each homeless era (going back to the city’s founding in the 1850s) with the li......more