Getting By

Getting By offers an integrated, critical account of the programs, rights, and legal protections that most directly affect poor and low-income people in the United States. Insufficient popular understanding about programs and legal protections has contributed to a widening gap between paper rights that exist on the books and actual benefits that people can enforce on the ground. A central goal of this volume is to empower individuals, groups, and communities to bridge this gap and, in doing so, to bridge gaps among those who are locked out of the American dream.