Böcker av Josephine Ensign

Can one city's solutions to homelessness help the United States face the issue nationally?The United States grapples with a solution for the unhoused by employing a patchwork of uneven rhetoric and policy. How can policymakers and public health professionals address this urgent problem in more innovative and sustainable ways? In Way Home, Josephine Ensign explores the contemporary landscape of homelessness by focusing on Seattle in King County to assess how their innovative local solutions can be scaled up nationally. From consumer-led shelter programs to the expansion of the Housing First model of care, Seattle-King County is a leader in this area. Ensign assesses the effectiveness of policies such as child tax credits, rental subsidies, eviction moratoriums, and programs for vehicle residents. As an expert in the field who has also experienced homelessness, Ensign draws from an extensive oral history project to share poignant firsthand accounts that inform and enrich her storytelling. This narrative incorporates human rights, support services, public health issues, and a path forward that acknowledges the true realities of people living unhoused. Amid the rapidly evolving public health and political landscape accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, Way Home deepens our understanding of the historical roots of homelessness and highlights innovative public policy and program efforts at the national, state, and local levels to address it.

A compelling look at the historical roots of poverty and homelessness, the "e;worthy"e; and "e;unworthy"e; poor, and the role of charity health care and public policy in the United States.Home to over 730,000 people, with close to four million people living in the metropolitan area, Seattle has the third-highest homeless population in the United States. In 2018, an estimated 8,600 homeless people lived in the city, a figure that does not include the significant number of "e;hidden"e; homeless people doubled up with friends or living in and out of cheap hotels. In Skid Road, Josephine Ensign digs through layers of Seattle history-past its leaders and prominent citizens, respectable or not-to reveal the stories of overlooked and long-silenced people who live on the margins of society. The sometimes fragmentary tales of these people, their lives and deaths, are not included in official histories of a place. How, Ensign asks, has a large, socially progressive city like Seattle responded to the health needs of people marginalized by poverty, mental illness, addiction, racial/ethnic/sexual identities, and homelessness? Drawing on interviews and extensive research, Ensign shares a diversity of voices within contemporary health care and public policy debates. Informed by her own lived experience of homelessness, as well as over three decades of work as a family nurse practitioner providing primary health care to homeless people, Ensign is uniquely situated to explore the tensions between caregiving and oppression, as well as charity and solidarity, that polarize perspectives on homelessness throughout the country. A timely story in light of the ongoing health care reform debate, the affordable housing crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic, the stories from Skid Road illuminate issues surrounding poverty and homelessness throughout America.

Soul Stories is an exploration of the boundaries of narrative within health and healing in the context of trauma and homelessness. It draws upon scholarly research across a range of disciplines, and is informed by Ensign's thirty years' experience as a nurse providing health care to people marginalized by poverty and homelessness, by her personal journey through homelessness as a young adult, and by her experience of teaching critical reflective practice to health science students. Soul Stories deepens our understanding of homelessness; trauma and resilience; gender-based violence; the role of narrative in health and healing; and ways we can humanize health care for patients, providers, and communities. It contributes to civically and community-engaged scholarship in the health humanities.