Grace Can Lead Us Home

Grace Can Lead Us Home is a must-read that will challenge your assumptions about homelessness, its causes, and potential solutions. Author Kevin Nye is the assistant director of programs at The Center in Hollywood, a non-religious non-profit providing services and advocacy for people experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles.

Nye argues that homelessness is a problem of unaffordable housing, and no matter how they end up homeless, all people deserve the resources they need, including housing. He explores the complex and interconnected issues that contribute to homelessness, such as affordable housing, mental illness, addiction, trauma, and systemic injustice. Nye does not shy away from the hard questions or the messy realities, but he also offers hope and grace to both the unhoused and the housed. He writes, “By drawing readers back to the biblical vision of justice, Kevin Nye gives readers a new lens for seeing their unhoused neighbors.”

In chapter four Nye talks about the disproportionate number of LGBTQ youth who are unhoused, in large part due to being kicked out of their homes. Sadly, even if they go to shelters, they aren't always safe, especially trans women. Many faith-based shelters are explicitly non-affirming and trans women are forced to sleep in rooms with cisgender men “puts them at direct risk for targeted violence.”

“As the battles over LGBTQ+ affirmation rage on in Christian institutions, we cannot lose sight of the physical and psychological harm we are inflicting on people whom God loves. Our limited theological imaginations, which prioritize how we think and feel about sexuality and gender identity over how we value the actual lives of fellow bearers of the divine image, is driving LGBTQ+ people to homelessness and all its subsequent harms.”

Grace Can Lead Us Home

“We must push for solutions that actually end homelessness, rather than ones that simply push it out of sight and out of mind.”