Kim Hopper’s book, Reckoning with Homelessness, discusses his ethnographic fieldwork of homeless people from 1979-1982. During his fieldwork he did not tell the homeless people who he encountered that he was an ethnographer studying them. He felt that he received very real stories from the homeless men when he made it seem like he was one of them. Hopper focuses mainly on homeless men because historically they were the first to be seen homeless.

Hopper talks with men who are living in shelters, on the streets, in airports, and at train stations. Often there were shelters for these men to go to; however they would rather be on the streets than the shelters. One man explained life in the shelters, “The shelter and flophouses were lousy, unsafe, dirty places, where brutality was common. Your cloths were stolen and your life threatened. Maintaining your respectability or cleanliness was impossible in such a setting” (Monroe 93).  Although living on the streets is not an easy way of living, especially when you are constantly being told that you can’t stay where you are and you have to move, the shelters were believed to be even worse than the streets. Airports seemed to be a common place of shelter for homeless. Homeless were attracted to airports because they have clean restrooms and drinking fountains for free water. Homeless would occupy the airports anywhere from three days to three years.

I find it interesting that Hopper focuses on men because we seem to mainly focus on women and families. What about the men who do not have any family or any ties? Men are a large percentage of the homeless population and they are just as important as the homeless women and children.