Front Street: Resistance and Rebirth in the Tent Cities of Techlandia

This heartfelt debut study from journalist Barth offers a window into Silicon Valley’s homeless encampments. Originally planning to write about “the horrors of late-stage technocapitalism in excruciating, jargon-drenched detail,” Barth shifted his perspective after forging relationships with unhoused people from three crowded encampments (one mere feet away from Apple’s corporate campus) and realizing they “had a very different tale to tell.” Encampments, he came to see, “function as communities,” and their dismantlement through sweeps and evictions is unbearably cruel. Among the residents profiled is Kent, who is “rebuilding his sense of self-worth from scratch”; Monte, who movingly describes “the camaraderie that I found here” to police officers in an attempt to stop a sweep; and Tiny, leader of a rent-free commune. By depicting their many struggles but also successes, Barth makes a persuasive case that solutions to homelessness should not be top-down, with “an adult daycare vibe,” but guided by unhoused people themselves. This narrative gets undermined, however, by a recurring focus on the author’s own experiences, which can make his advocacy seem more like a mea culpa: he mentions running an Airbnb rental (“I’m a part of the machine driving up real estate prices”), his “addiction” to upward mobility, and his avoidance of his maternal lineage of activism. Though these dips into memoir distract, this up-close, multifaceted representation of an unhoused community is still worthwhile. (Nov.)