The Lost and the Found: A True Story of Homelessness, Found Family and Second Chances

A powerful and deeply reported exposé on homelessness in San Francisco, from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and San Francisco Chronicle reporter who has covered homelessness for thirty years and experienced it himself.

Housing prices nationwide have skyrocketed, causing people to flee to smaller, cheaper cities, in turn driving up those prices and creating a vicious cycle of real estate mania. But who gets left behind? As cities become less and less affordable, homelessness is on the rise, and California is home to the largest number of homeless people in America.

Kevin Fagan’s The Lost and the Found takes an empathic and humane approach to explaining what’s behind the homelessness epidemic in one of the most prosperous cities in America—San Francisco. We are introduced to Rita and Tommy, two homeless people whom he has known for over a decade, and their struggle to pull themselves out of homelessness and addiction, and how some of their kids eventually made it out.

This is also a deeply researched commentary on the housing market, and a set of policy solutions to help civil leaders and activists chart a way out of this epidemic. Moving, insightful, and accessible, The Lost and the Found is destined to become a sociology classic.